Re: Concern with prose in @aria-errormessage

Rich,

I'm okay with the current text, which says that the error message element
MAY be a live region.

I was responding to James's suggestion that we disallow this. James says
that we shouldn't allow aria-errormessage to point to a live region,
because that could lead to a duplicate announcement.

My concern is that if an author is *already* using a live region for their
error message (this is a common practice now), that they won't want to
remove the live region when adding support for aria-errormessage, because
then users with a browser or AT that doesn't yet support aria-errormessage
would have an inferior experience.

My preference would be to leave the text as it is now, and encourage AT to
do the extra work to prevent duplicate announcements when an error message
is also a live region.

- Dominic

On Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 1:09 PM Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com>
wrote:

> 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
>
> [image: Inactive hide details for Dominic Mazzoni ---09/11/2015 11:04:35
> AM---On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 12:58 AM, James Craig <jcraig@app]Dominic
> Mazzoni ---09/11/2015 11:04:35 AM---On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 12:58 AM, James
> Craig <jcraig@apple.com> wrote: > http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria
>
> 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*
> <jcraig@apple.com>> wrote:
>
>    *http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#aria-errormessage*
>    <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
>       <http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#dfn-element> applying
>       either an *aria-live*
>       <http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#aria-live> property
>       or using one of the *live region roles*
>       <http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#live_region_roles>,
>       for example, *alert*
>       <http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#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.
>
>
>