Re: role = 'img'

Hey Wayne,
I understand the problem you are outlining, but I'm not entirely clear on
what approach you are trying to take? Are you suggesting that you want to
use ARIA role=img to annotate font icons, so that if you write a custom
stylesheet, you can leave those fonts unchanged? If so, it seems to me
there are some problems with adding role=img. With ARIA 1.1 fallback roles,
you can have something like role="graphics-symbol img". Are you suggesting
fallback roles wouldn't be allowed, or that the best practice is to always
add img to the role, regardless of what other roles might be there?

Wilco


On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 7:37 PM Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Group,
> Right now icon fonts are the only barrier to replacing the author's font.
> The text width problem that was anticipated earlier has not materialized to
> be a problem.
>
> So, I am hoping this can be a best practice with strong encouragement.
>
> It really is a total misuse of semantics. People use text element tags
> like <i> and <span> to carry pictures.
>
> This would be innocuous if these were not targets of font change. The <i>
> is important to low vision because it changes the way font looks in a bad
> way. <span> is important because it has no natural semantics.
>
> If this problem was solved the issue of changing font could be addressed
> with font-family style, but without use of role an extension approach is
> needed. Then the at can only guess. Does class contain a particular set of
> values? Is the included text one character long?
>
> A font analyzer has now unambiguous way to separate text for font
> replacement and pictures disguised as text to leave alone.
>
> I need some help, if I am to automate stylesheet selection for non-experts.
>
> Best, Wayne
>


-- 
*Wilco Fiers*
Senior Accessibility Engineer - Co-facilitator WCAG-ACT - Chair Auto-WCAG