Re: Rethinking the necessities of ARIA landmark role "main" and HTML5 <main> element

Hi Bryan,

this is a known BUG in JAWS, here is a work around for it:

Annoying JAWS 13 + IE 9 ARIA landmark role on div element
bug<http://www.html5accessibility.com/tests/div-landmark.html>

with regards

--
SteveF
HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
<http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html>


On 24 March 2013 02:40, Bryan Garaventa <bryan.garaventa@whatsock.com>wrote:

> **
> I have experimented with role="main" in the recent past as well, and it's
> come up in obscure ways with various clients in the last year as well when
> trying to diagnose weird accessibility issues  regarding ARIA.
>
> I understand the theory, and I even tried to implement role="main" on
> WhatSock.com, but the results were not as good as I hoped from what the
> intended purpose of the role states it to be.
>
> Here is a simple example of this regarding form fields contained within a
> region with role="main".
>
> <div role="main">
>
> <form>
>
> <input type="text" title="Full name" />
>
> <input type="text" title="Email address" />
>
> </form>
>
> </div>
> If you are in Forms Mode in JAWS 13 when using IE, you will here "Landmark
> Region" in addition to every form field label spoken when pressing Tab,
> and in JAWS 14 you will hear "Region", which is distracting and quite
> annoying when dealing with forms that involve more than twenty fields in
> number for instance.
>
> I've also noticed strange behaviors when other roles are nested within
> role="main", as well as when interactive widgets are present such as
> role="tablist", and many others. Some of the behaviors I've seen include
> the automatic announcement of everything contained within the region of
> role="main" when dynamic content changes occur within a localized section
> of another widget also contained within this broad container.
>
> So, after I added role="main" to WhatSock.com, I found all of these
> issues, and immediately removed it.
>
> Since then, I'm not a fan of adding attributes just because there is a
> specification that promotes it, without performing comprehensive testing to
> verify it beforehand.
>
> This is something I recommend everyone do, because I have diagnosed many
> website issues that are directly a result of developers adding ARIA
> attributes to their markup without have any idea how it will impact screen
> reader interaction and feedback.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
> *To:* Charles McCathie Nevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru>
> *Cc:* Ian Yang <ian@invigoreight.com> ; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> *Sent:* Saturday, March 23, 2013 7:14 PM
> *Subject:* Re: Rethinking the necessities of ARIA landmark role "main"
> and HTML5 <main> element
>
> Hi Chaals,
>
> thanks for the detailed reply to Ian, the apparent terseness of my own
> reply was based on the knowledge of Ian's (Yang) being involved in much of
> the discussion[1] that occurred on the WHATWG list on the subject, and in
> fact being the person who triggered my renewed interest in the development
> of the feature.
>
> >My conclusions are that differences in the WHAT-WG version are silly, but
> the element as specified in the HTML specification and as commonly
> >implemented is actually very useful.
>
> It should be noted that the differences (with the W3C definition) in how
> main has been defined in the whatwg spec have not been ignored. I have
> sought to understand what the reasoning for those differences is [2] and
> also asked Ian (Hixie) directly on IRC, but have not as yet received any
> response.
>
> [1]
> http://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/search?type-index=public-whatwg-archive&index-type=t&keywords=maincontent&search=Search
> [2]
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2013Feb/0172.html
>
> with regards
>
> --
> SteveF
> HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
> <http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html>
>
>
> On 24 March 2013 00:33, Charles McCathie Nevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru>wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:21:17 +0100, Steve Faulkner <
>> faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Ian,
>>>
>>> Ian Hixie, he mentioned that the existence of the ARIA landmark role
>>>> "main" is a mistake
>>>>
>>>
>> I've seen this assertion from him, and discussions about why. I am
>> unconvinced by the arguments I have seen. I also haven't seen anything that
>> reasonably contradicts the data Steve produced to justify the element. My
>> discussions with web developers, from small-shop devs to things like Yandex
>> with millions of users across dozens or hundreds of services suggest that
>> the element makes sense.
>>
>>  That's very thought-provoking
>>>>
>>>
>> Well, it might be. The original proposal was thought-provoking enough to
>> also provoke me into reading other people's thoughts and research and even
>> doing a small amount of my own. My conclusions are that differences in the
>> WHAT-WG version are silly, but the element as specified in the HTML
>> specification and as commonly implemented is actually very useful.
>>
>> The fact that Ian disagrees with something isn't enough to be
>> though-provoking on its own. He is clever, and often right. But not about
>> everything. Some of his insights into accessibility are very helpful, and
>> some of them just suggest that he knows more about other aspects of HTML.
>>
>>
>> both role=main and now <main> are part of the web platform and
>>> interoperably implemented across browsers and assistive technology
>>>
>>
>> Yes, and this happened very quickly. That doesn't necessarily mean they
>> are a good idea, because sometimes the wisdom of the crowd isn't quite as
>> clever as we hope, but it suggests that a large proportion of the relevant
>> decision makers, who on balance are usually quite smart and quite
>> thoughtful about what they add to the web, are convinced that the element
>> makes sense.
>>
>> A major reason for the element is to replace the "skip to main content"
>> links that are all over the web, for accessibility purposes. While the use
>> of those links is a terrible bit of architecture (they only work if you
>> start from the top of the page and navigate with the keyboard, etc etc)
>> they are deemed useful enough to include on all kinds of websites whose
>> designs have been through multiple rounds of usability testing to ensure
>> they make sense in practice.
>>
>> There have been discussions in all kinds of places. Since Steve was the
>> big proponent, he can probably provide pointers by digging through his
>> email archive, but I suggest you look at the mail archives of the W3C's
>> HTML Working Group[1], the W3C's HTML Accessibility Task Force[2] in
>> particular. You can also look at things like IRC logs, blog posts, and so
>> on. A Yandex search [3] shows a handful of interesting perspectives in
>> blogs and articles, too.
>>
>> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/**Public/public-html/<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/>
>> [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/**Public/public-html-a11y/<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/>
>> [3] http://yandex.com/yandsearch?**text=html5+main+element&clid=**
>> 1823140&lr=213<http://yandex.com/yandsearch?text=html5+main+element&clid=1823140&lr=213>
>>
>> Note that this is just my personal opinion, and I am not always right :)
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Chaals
>>
>> --
>> Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
>>       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com
>>
>
>