Re: Informative components of w3c specifications

Hi Shane,

You wrote:
> I know that it is possible to mark a section as informative 
> (class='informative').  In order to ensure that people using assistive 
> technologies (e.g., a screen reader) are aware they are in an 
> informative section, Mark Sadecki has suggested that the section be 
> marked with a role of 'region' and an aria-label of "informative". 
>  With my "PFWG" hat on, this makes sense and I was going to make this 
> change in the aria.js module...  Although I would prefer that the 
> label be 'non-normative' to be more consistent with the text that is 
> injected into such sections.

The label of a section is its heading (<hn>).  The ARIA role 
corresponding to <section> is "region".  The spec for region recommends 
that authors use @aria-labelledby to reference the region's heading[1].

I think what is suggested here is a way to declare up front what "kind" 
of section this is, be it normative vs. informative.   That is more 
descriptive than a label.  Perhaps an @aria-describedby pointing to the 
paragraph that states "This section is informative", is a way to go.

Note, that leads to a testing issue.  The statement regarding normative 
vs. informative is the first paragraph of the section.  An frequent 
complaint is that screen readers speak the same text twice in such 
contexts, first as the description (or label), and then as the actual 
paragraph of text.

Finally, why isn't the presence of the statement as the first paragraph 
good enough?  After the heading, it will be the first piece of text read 
by the screen reader.  Put another way:  is this a feature screen reader 
users are asking for?

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#region

-- 
;;;;joseph.


'A: After all, it isn't rocket science.'
'K: Right. It's merely computer science.'
              - J. D. Klaun -

Received on Wednesday, 2 July 2014 14:30:24 UTC