Re: Agenda: August 27, 2015 WAI-PF ARIA Caucus (Correction I am still chairing this week)

Rich wrote:
> Asking the group to waste cycles finding a real world example where this element is used is a waste of people's time for something we just want to protect the user against in case it happens.
> 
It seems like a waste of time to ask an engineering team to make an explicit change to a rendering when, as you say, "There was NO real world need for it…"
> The right thing would be to NOT have rowgroup receive a tabindex at all but the browser vendors decided differently. There was NO real world need for it to receive tabindex. 
> 

I think the right fallback behavior is for a focusable thead/tfoot/tbody to be exposed as a generic focusable element, which would invalidate the containing table's semantic role.

…unless there is a valid need to focus a rowgroup. It seems like you're saying there is no need.

More importantly, the "group" role is not identical to the generic role. Otherwise there would be no difference between <div> and <div role="group">... This is not a cleanup exercise. Changing all generic elements to be exposed as groups would have very broad and undesirable effects.

James
 


> On Sep 8, 2015, at 4:58 PM, Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
> James, 
> 
> What the group is trying to do is deliver consistency across browsers. All the other browsers, except Safari, are consistent. This is a cleanup exercise. 
> 
> Do we see a lot of use of this? No. 
> 
> However, the fact that the HTML working group decided to make every element accept a tabindex and rowgroup can receive focus we had to address the gap in the browsers. 
> 
> Do we think this will happen a lot? No. 
> 
> There needs to be some degree of predictability in the browser implementation. Should, for whatever reason, an author put tabindex on this useless element the user will receive a very confusing user experience that only impacts the user of the assistive technology as the user who is not impaired will see physical showed in the UI around the rowgroup. 
> 
> Asking the group to waste cycles finding a real world example where this element is used is a waste of people's time for something we just want to protect the user against in case it happens. The right thing would be to NOT have rowgroup receive a tabindex at all but the browser vendors decided differently. There was NO real world need for it to receive tabindex. 
> 
> Rich
> 
> 
> Rich Schwerdtfeger
> 
> James Craig ---08/31/2015 03:39:43 PM---Is there a real-world use case that does this? It seems like a pretty complicated example to discuss
> 
> From: James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>
> To: Joseph Scheuhammer <clown@alum.mit.edu>
> Cc: PF <public-pfwg@w3.org>
> Date: 08/31/2015 03:39 PM
> Subject: Re: Agenda: August 27, 2015 WAI-PF ARIA Caucus (Correction I am still chairing this week)
> 
> 
> 
> Is there a real-world use case that does this? It seems like a pretty complicated example to discuss as a theoretical problem. 
> 
> For example, what's the real-world need to focus a row group?
> 
> James
> 
> 
> > On Aug 26, 2015, at 9:02 AM, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi James,
> > 
> > On 2015-08-25 12:40 PM, Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:
> >> 
> >> *Agenda: August 27, 2015 WAI-PF ARIA Caucus*
> >> ...
> >> 
> >>    6. Action 1578 Discuss Issue 700 with the Working group (Should
> >>    rowgroup, tbody, and thead have any role mapping in AAPIs? should
> >>    there be an accessible object?
> >>    or, should it be a generic object? (Rich)
> >>      o I believe we discussed this and we made the "group" role the
> >>        generic role. This would be consistent with IE and Safari
> >>        mappings. Shouldn't this be closed?
> >>      o _https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/issues/700_
> >>      o _https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/actions/1578_
> >> 
> > 
> > 
> > Rich notes above, "I believe we discussed this and we made the 'group' role the generic role".  I can confirm that the AAPI group decided to change the mappings for role="rowgroup" to a generic group-like role for the various platforms [1].  The reason is that authors can create a grid with rowgroup elements that are focusable and interactive (e.g., respond to clicks) [2].
> > 
> > However, the statement, "This would be consistent with IE and Safari mappings" is not correct with respect to Safari.  The current AXAPI mapping for rowgroup is "Not mapped".  There is a webkit bug in this regard [3].  What is the current thinking regarding AXAPI's mapping of the rowgroup role?
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > [1] http://w3c.github.io/aria/core-aam/core-aam.html#role-map-rowgroup <http://w3c.github.io/aria/core-aam/core-aam.html#role-map-rowgroup>
> > [2] http://clown.idrc.ocad.ca/Fluid/aria/FocusableRowGroup.html <http://clown.idrc.ocad.ca/Fluid/aria/FocusableRowGroup.html>
> > [3] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146239 <https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146239>
> > 
> > -- 
> > ;;;;joseph.
> > 
> > 'Array(16).join("wat" - 1) + " Batman!"'
> >           - G. Bernhardt -
> > 
> 
> 
> 
>