Re: Informative components of w3c specifications

I think the original request was so that the consumer would not have to do
anything special to know that a section is non-normative.  However, as you
point out, for actual "sections" there is a paragraph that states the
section is non-normative, so that may well be "enough".  Mark is on holiday
- we can see what he says when he returns.

My question that started this thread was not really about sections so much
as things that are NOT sections (e.g., notes).  In the case of a note there
is rarely a header other than "NOTE".  On a note are you okay with
embedding a role and label?


On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 9:29 AM, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown@alum.mit.edu>
wrote:

> 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 -
>
>