Re: What's everyone's view on backwards-support, etc for ARIA

Jonathan Avila wrote:

> My guess would be that if an AT doesn’t support the nav element it might
not support the role of navigation either.

This made me curious, so I tested with NVDA 2015.1 and Internet Explorer
11. I found that this combo supports role="navigation" but does not support
<nav>.

http://evanmedia.com/accessibility/testpage/nav.html

I've continued to recommend <nav role="navigation"> because I see a benefit
for users, and no contradiction with web standards. I would not recommend
<li role="listitem">, because the HTML element alone offers accessibility
that's at least as good as the ARIA role.

"When the host language provides a feature that provides equivalent
accessibility to the WAI-ARIA feature, use the host language feature."
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/introduction


On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 5:40 PM, Oscar Cao <oscar.cao@live.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the replies Jonathan and Steve.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Oscar
>
>
>
> *From:* Jonathan Avila [mailto:jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, 26 February 2015 11:55 PM
> *To:* Oscar Cao; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> *Subject:* RE: What's everyone's view on backwards-support, etc for ARIA
>
>
>
> Ø  Cannot remember which article it was that said, even though we’re
> using semantic mark-up we should add in the ARIA roles for older AT that
> does not support the new semantic mark-up, since it does no harm, as the
> role is still the same.
>
>
>
> My guess would be that if an AT doesn’t support the nav element it might
> not support the role of navigation either.  The possible benefit would be
> from older browsers like IE 7 or 8 where an HTML5 element might not be
> supported by the browser put perhaps the AT is newer and might pull from
> the DOM the ARIA role, e.g. with a newer version of JAWS like 14+.
>
>
>
> So as Steve said you shouldn’t do it – but there could be edge cases where
> it might provide benefits – IMO you’d want to test those and only add when
> needed to provide accessibility support.
>
>
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan Avila
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> SSB BART Group
> jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com
>
>
>
> 703-637-8957 (o)
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>
>
> *From:* Oscar Cao [mailto:oscar.cao@live.com <oscar.cao@live.com>]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 25, 2015 11:40 PM
> *To:* w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> *Subject:* What's everyone's view on backwards-support, etc for ARIA
>
>
>
> Hello
>
>
>
> Just skimming through the draft for ARIA in HTML
> <https://specs.webplatform.org/html-aria/webspecs/master/> and I noticed
> it says web devs shouldn’t use ARIA ROLES to specify the role of an element
> which already has that role implied via its native semantics. E.g. <nav
> role=”navigation”></nav>
>
>
>
> Cannot remember which article it was that said, even though we’re using
> semantic mark-up we should add in the ARIA roles for older AT that does not
> support the new semantic mark-up, since it does no harm, as the role is
> still the same.
>
>
>
> So what’s everyone on this mailing lists’ point of view on this?
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Oscar
>



-- 
Mitchell Evan
mtchllvn@gmail.com
(510) 375-6104 mobile