Re: F68 forbids WAI ARIA to replace label element

This is the accessibility support question. But failures are stronger than
techniques, and I don't think we have accessibility support allowances for
them. I think we do need to revisit this failure.

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Gregg Vanderheiden <gv@trace.wisc.edu>wrote:

> Until everything (most everything?) supports ARIA -  wouldn’t using ARIA
> only be equivalent to having no label for all those who use (must use in
> their company) technologies that do not support ARIA?
>
>
> *Gregg*
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Gregg Vanderheiden Ph.D.
> Director Trace R&D Center
> Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering
> and Biomedical Engineering
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
>
> Co-Director, Raising the Floor - International
> and the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure Project
> http://Raisingthefloor.org   ---   http://GPII.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Jun 30, 2011, at 1:49 PM, Adam Solomon wrote:
>
> Agree 100% - it should be this way - but is that a failure?
> Regarding ie6: We have a technique, for instance, which allows browser zoom
> as a substitute for resizable text sizes. This does not work in ie6, yet it
> is an official technique. For a company which required conformance and
> provided their employees with ie6, you are absolutely right - this fails.
> But for open internet, ie6 is not mandated.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Sailesh Panchang
> Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 9:26 PM
> To: 'WCAG'
> Subject: RE: F68 forbids WAI ARIA to replace label element
>
> I see no reason why LABEL should not be used when visible text label is
> present for a standard HTML form control. User agents old and new support
> it. ARIA-LABELLEDBY could be used as a hack to associate multiple labels
> with a form control but it should not be used if it is the only label for a
> control. Even today there are companies who test with IE 6 ... they do so
> because there are users still using it. There are users who are using older
> versions of screen readers and cannot afford to buy the latest JAWS /
> WinEyes. Right NVDA etc. is free but some PWD / older folks are comfortable
> with their AT and do not want to switch.
> Just because a technique is there does not mean it should be used every
> where even if it is not recommended in that situation.
> Sailesh
>
> --- On Thu, 6/30/11, Adam Solomon <adam.solomon2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Adam Solomon <adam.solomon2@gmail.com>
> Subject: RE: F68 forbids WAI ARIA to replace label element
> To: "'Sailesh Panchang'" <spanchang02@yahoo.com>, "'David MacDonald'" <
> david100@sympatico.ca>
> Cc: "'WCAG'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
> Date: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 1:31 PM
>
>
> While you are all certainly correct in stressing the fact that it is
> preferable to implement native code, I think it harsh to fail in a situation
> where aria-labelledby is utilized. We are always stressing the fact that our
> techniques are sufficient, but not exclusive of other techniques which might
> work. De facto, aria will currently work for users in a non-primitive user
> agent environment (unless I'm mistakenly assuming that it is currently
> supported by modern browsers). How can we then fail this seemingly
> sufficient technique? Not elegant, yet it does the job. Yes, a hack, but a
> successful one. I think it unwise to demand state of the art solutions as a
> prerequisite - better to keep it advisory in nature.
>
> adam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Sailesh Panchang
> Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 6:48 PM
> To: David MacDonald
> Cc: 'WCAG'
> Subject: RE: F68 forbids WAI ARIA to replace label element
>
> David,
>
> That's a good point Sailesh
>
> The HTML spec says each label element has exactly one corresponding
> >field...... so in those cases, F68 may be OK, but I don't think F68 >allows
> for the freedom that we find in the WAI ARIA language of "wherever
> >possible", because F68 applies to all field elements.
>
> Sailesh: F68 applies only where UI has a visible text label and association
> is not made or made incorrectly.
> F68 does not apply to all situations... meaning all form controls on a
> page.
>
> There may be times when a standard label element must be used to describe
> >more than one field... I think this is a situation where it is perhaps it
> >is a good choice, and where the label element doesn't work too well.
> >Currently this would fail under F68, no?
>
> Sailesh: Use of title attribute is allowed as per techniques when no
> visible label is present or  in a situation like a form within data table.
> Title attribute or off-screen label can be used  to relate col and row
> header with  form controls to aid non-visuall  / AT users. This is well
> supported by browsers and AT. ARIA not necessary here.
> Also HTML allows more than one label to be associated with a form control.
> But user agents do not support this  reliably though this has been in the
> specs for years. So aria-labelledby / aria-describedby can be relied upon in
> these situations. Using ARIA here is a hack for user agents' limitations.
> Again, ARIA is meant to be used for dynamic content using scripting and
> custom elements- not on standard form controls. (No scripting is required to
> code standard HTML form controls). One uses ARIA as a hack to counter
> limitations of user agents but thatis not what ARIA is designed for.
> And that is the real problem: when user agents do not support or do not
> support a feature uniformly the user suffers. One may come out with elegant
> specs but one is at mercy of user agents. Already we see some ARIA features
> are better supported in FF and not in IE or not at all.
> Another example: The title attribute may be used on most HTML elements as
> per specs but is not uniformly supported by user agents.
> Sailesh Panchang
> www.deque.com
>
>
>
>
>
> David MacDonald
> www.eramp.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Sailesh Panchang
> Sent: June-29-11 10:32 PM
> To: WCAG
> Subject: Re: F68 forbids WAI ARIA to replace label element
>
> I think one needs to take a step back and look at the WAI-ARIA  specs. The
> intro clearly states that one should use standard HTML elements wherever
> possible because these are natively supported and role, state etc is exposed
> to browsers and AT. ARIA  is designed to improve the accessibility of
> dynamic content generated by scripts including custom elements / widgets. It
> is referred to as a bridging technology by the specs.  HTML works just fine
> with browsers and AT. Use technology for purpose it is designed and intended
> and documented.
> I quote, "It is not appropriate to create objects with style and script
> when the host language provides a semantic element for that type of
> objects".
> So it is indeed a failure if one uses aria-labelledby on a standard HTML
> INPUT element without using HTML LABEL element. Use ARIA where standard HTML
> is not designed to work.
> Refer to 1.3 and 1.4 on
> http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/introduction
>
> Thanks,
> Sailesh Panchang
> www.deque.com
>
> Tel 571-344-1765
> --- On Wed, 6/29/11, Chris Beer <chris@codex.net.au> wrote:
>
> From: Chris Beer <chris@codex.net.au>
> Subject: Re: F68 forbids WAI ARIA to replace label element
> To: "WCAG" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
> Date: Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 6:12 PM
>
> Agreed. Furthermore it will need an careful genericising rewrite to account
> not only for the fact that ARIA labelledby can be applied to more than
> simply form/input controls, but also to make it HTML5 applicable as well as
> 4.0x and XHTML.
> If no one gets to it, its on my to do list with HTML5 STs, (yeah yeah, I
> know) but that said, we'll need to look at all the techniques after they
> move to generalized (X)HTML for ARIA conflicts and impacts.
> Chris Beer (iPhone)
> On 30/06/2011, at 3:24, David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20101014/F68  �As we ramp up
> for the introduction of WAI ARIA, we may need to fix some of our failures.
> F68 is a binary check that requires a <label> element. If not there is a
> failure of 4.1.2 �I think we�ll need to allow for wai-aria (labelledby),
> while acknowledging the preference to native code. �David
> MacDonaldwww.eramp.com
>
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