Re: Concern with prose in @aria-errormessage

Dominic,

I am confused by your concern.

aria-errormessage does point to the error message and it can be a live
region. Are you saying that if it does point to the error message that the
error message MUST be a live region?

What we are saying in the text is that if you have an error message (which
you would in the case of an alert, status, or aria-live="..."). How does
pointing to an error message break backward compatibility> We are not
asking that the author remove aria live properties.

We don't say anything about what is announced when aria-errormessage is
applied. All that the relationship does is indicate which error message in
the page is associated with the element.

Rich


Rich Schwerdtfeger



From:	Dominic Mazzoni <dmazzoni@google.com>
To:	James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>
Cc:	"WAI Protocols & Formats" <public-pfwg@w3.org>
Date:	09/11/2015 11:04 AM
Subject:	Re: Concern with prose in @aria-errormessage



On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 12:58 AM, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com> wrote:
  http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#aria-errormessage

  I'm concerned this line in @aria-errormessage is going to result in
  duplicated announcements. Reconciling these two different types of
  user-facing announcements would be very challenging from an
  implementation perspective.

        Authors may use live regions for the error message element applying
        either an aria-live property or using one of the live region roles,
        for example, alert.

  Please change it to recommend one or the other (either @aria-errormessage
  or live regions) but not both simultaneously.

I understand your concern, but I'm afraid that this would hinder adoption
of aria-errormessage because of backwards compatibility. If I have a highly
accessible web form right now and I switch from using role=alert for error
messages (in addition to aria-invalid, of course) to aria-errormessage,
that would be a regression for any users who aren't using a supported
browser/AT combination.

While I realize it's an implementation challenge, I'd lean towards allowing
the target of aria-errormessage to point to a live region (or alert), and
put the burden on AT to keep track of this and detect it as part of support
for aria-errormessage.