RE: Call for Review: Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.0 Working Draft

Hi Paul,

We have defined a “noteref” role [1], but you’ll note that there is an issue in the document regarding that role as there is still some discussion about the best approach.

It would be helpful if you would file an issue on the GitHub repository [2] if there is something specific you’d like to see. Please note that we will publish the First Public Working Draft of the Mappings for Accessibility  APIs for DPUB-ARIA shortly.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/dpub-aria-1.0/#doc-noteref

[2] https://github.com/w3c/aria/issues


Tzviya Siegman
Digital Book Standards & Capabilities Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: Paul Bohman [mailto:paul.bohman@deque.com]
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2015 10:25 AM
To: Ivan Herman
Cc: Michael Cooper; WAI IG; W3C Digital Publishing IG; Richard S. Schwerdtfeger; Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken; Markus Gylling
Subject: Re: Call for Review: Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.0 Working Draft

That's good that the footmark roles will be allowed elsewhere. Have you defined how footnotes should act, in terms of discoverability, and a keyboard interaction model?
By discoverability, I mean if the author writes a linked superscript in the text, is there a way to know that this is a link to a footnote? I would think that the screen reader should say something like "link superscript footnote 1" or something along those lines. And if the user is at the bottom of the page where the footnotes are, they should hear "footnote 1" at the start of the footnote. So there are two places where they would need to know that it's a footnote, but the two instances are not the same role. One is the link to the footnote. The other is the actual footnote text.
And with regard to keyboard interaction model, I would hope that there would be a way for users to have the option of either going to the footnote in the text (moving down to that location), or hearing/seeing the footnote where they currently are, without having to move focus. It could be in a tooltip-type popup, for the benefit of sighted keyboard users, but screen reader users wouldn't need a tooltip. They could use some keyboard method to have the footnote read to them, with no visible tooltip, by virtue of the link's programmatic association with the footnote.
There's also another very important aspect of keyboard interaction, which is the ability to return to the previous spot and have the keyboard focus actually return to the original link/control. In my recent testing, the only browser that returned the focus to the original link/control when using alt + left arrow (on Windows) or command + left arrow (on Mac) was IE on Windows. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari moved the viewport back up to the visual area where the focus was, but they did not put the keyboard focus on the original controller. I realize this is a browser flaw, but it's a bad one, which breaks keyboard accessibility when trying to return to the previous location within the same page.


Paul Bohman, PhD
Director of Training, Deque Systems, Inc
703-225-0380, ext.121
https://DequeUniversity.com


On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 12:42 AM, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org<mailto:ivan@w3.org>> wrote:
Paul,

it is certainly the intention that these roles would be used for any Web document, and not only for the area of digital publishing. There is no (there shouldn't be, if there is, it is a bug:-) any such restriction in the specification nor will there be in the upcoming AT mapping of those terms.

Ivan

On 22 Nov 2015, at 23:47, Paul Bohman <paul.bohman@deque.com<mailto:paul.bohman@deque.com>> wrote:

Will these digital publishing roles be available for use in regular web pages? There is a need for things like footnotes, for example, in regular web pages, even if they're not in digital publications. I'm thinking of footnotes with legal disclaimers, the small print about special offers, etc. Will it be frowned-upon to use these new roles in those situations?