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

I agree, it would be good if FS simply fixed the issue.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sailesh Panchang" <sailesh.panchang@deque.com>
To: "Steve Faulkner" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Cc: "Bryan Garaventa" <bryan.garaventa@whatsock.com>; "Charles McCathie 
Nevile" <chaals@yandex-team.ru>; "Ian Yang" <ian@invigoreight.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2013 2:30 PM
Subject: Re: Rethinking the necessities of ARIA landmark role "main" and 
HTML5 <main> element


> With reference to Bryan's comment re. JAWS' bug in dealing with form
> controls within role=main region and Steve's response with a fix at
> http://www.html5accessibility.com/tests/div-landmark.html
>
> I think it is a bad idea to use role=form within role=main simply to
> fix a JAWS'bug.
> The issue should be taken up with FS and FS should resolve the issue.
> It makes no sense to code
> <form role="form" ...>
> That's not  what WAI-ARIA is meant for.
> The FORM element has existed since the dawn of HTML, so why is
> role=form required?
> Also Refer: http://www.w3.org/WAI/AR/comments/details?comment_id=399
> Sailesh Panchang
>
>
> On 3/24/13, Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

Received on Monday, 25 March 2013 03:00:11 UTC