Re: Making ARIA and native HTML play better together

+3 (+1 to each idea).
One of the most problematic aspects of using ARIA is that developers,
however well intentioned, hardly ever implement all the require
functionality of a given role via scripting, or do so inconsistently.
This makes ARIA undesireable for two reasons:
1. Developers have to put in a lot of additional work, making the ARIA
magic bullet a lot less magic.
2. Users can't rely on consistency when browsing webpages (because
developers either did not realize they have to implement all the
expected element behavior or they only implement a part of it).

If we can move at least part of the implementation details to the
browser, we ensure a much more consistent, predictable and pleasant
user experience for ARIA.
Re item #2: Couldn't we implement it so that tabindex="-1" works for
ARIA controls as well as for  native ones?
<div role="button" tabindex="-1">I am a button but I am not in the
focus order</div>
Or are there implementation complexities that would make this impossible?
Thanks

I realize we might have to only work with a small subset of most
common ARIA elements, at least to begin with .. but if we can make
this happen, at least in part, developers and users will thank us for
it.


On 5/7/15, Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 May 2015 at 07:06, Dominic Mazzoni <dmazzoni@google.com> wrote:
>
>> 1. I like the label element idea.
>>
>
> So do I :-)
>
>>
>> 2. For the specific case of adding focusability, one concern is that
>> there's no way to revert back to not being focusable at all. Adding
>> tabIndex=-1 would leave the element as focusable but not part of the tab
>> order. Also, this isn't backwards compatible. This would change the
>> semantics and has the potential to break sites.
>>
>> 3. For changing behavior based on the role, one disadvantage I can see is
>> that it potentially makes ARIA more "dangerous" for web developers. I've
>> often helped developers make existing sites accessible. It's very
>> reassuring that any changes to ARIA attributes won't affect the look and
>> feel of the site and won't require testing again in every browser - only
>> accessibility needs to be tested again, not everything else. This change
>> also isn't backwards compatible. This would change the semantics and has
>> the potential to break sites.
>>
>
> One possible method to overcome the backwards compat issues would be to
> require a boolean atribute to be added to enable the behaviours, for
> example 'interactive'
>
> <div role="button" interactive>press me</div>
>
> --
>
> Regards
>
> SteveF
> HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
>

Received on Thursday, 7 May 2015 12:32:59 UTC