Re: ACTION-1711: Get with Alex Surkov to discuss name from content removal from listitems

Hi, Joseph. It's not a backward compatible change, so I would probably not
wake up a sleeping dog.

On the contrary to your arguments, accessible name is a primary text
property that is read when an element is focused. When the user navigates a
listbox moving the focus through items one by one then each item should be
announced. Thus list item content exposed as accessible name looks
appropriate. At least it matches the way how assistive technologies handle
the focus.

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 11:06 AM, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown@alum.mit.edu>
wrote:

> Hi Alex,
>
> I have an action for this coming Thu ARIA meeting to ask your opinion on
> dropping the accessible name requirement from the listitem role.  Here's a
> summary of where we are at.
>
> 1. List items (role="listitem") are text containers that must appear
> within the context of a list (role="list") or a group (role="group"). [1]
> 2. List items are not interactive or widget like. [2]
> 3. Currently, list items require an accessible name, meaning browsers must
> compute a name for all list items. [1]
> 4. Currently, name-from-content is allowed as one way to compute the name.
> [1]
>
> After a number of discussions and emails, we have come to conclusion that
> the name requirement is not needed, and the name-from-contents is sometimes
> detrimental.
>
> Since listitems are not widget like, they are similar to other text
> containers such as paragraphs.  They are just containers of structured
> text.  Paragraphs do not require a name, so why should list items?
>
> Also, when combined with the name-from-contents, requiring an accessible
> name can result in very long name if the author has not provided a name,
> depending on the contents of the list item.
>
> The conclusion we have come to is to remove 3 and 4 above from the
> definition of the listitem role [1].  Accessible name is no longer
> required, which implies that name-from-contents is no longer needed.
>
> However, before we finalize this, we wanted your opinion on the matter.
>
> Thanks.
>
> [1] http://w3c.github.io/aria/aria/aria.html#listitem
> [2] http://w3c.github.io/aria/aria/aria.html#list
>
> --
> ;;;;joseph.
>
> 'Array(16).join("wat" - 1) + " Batman!"'
>            - G. Bernhardt -
>
>