RE: FW: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

Hi,
It is important to note that standard ARIA roles and supporting attributes are global in context, meaning they are usable within any HTML webpage and will be parsed by the browser in that context.

The epub roles, in contrast, are specific to epub document syntax, and do require XML namespacing to function properly.
https://format.mtm.se/nordic_epub/2020-1#namespaces


At least, this is my understanding.

“Also, do these roles communicate any information directly to the user, or only to the assistive technologies users might be using?”

The breakdown is that valid ARIA roles and supporting attributes are parsed by the browser, the browser then builds the accessibility tree which maps them into the OS accessibility API, then Ats like screen readers interface with elements in the accessibility tree, then the AT conveys what it detects to the user however this is programmed to do so such as by conveying the role of the element or detecting changed states or triggered events on those elements.

Hopefully that makes sense.

All the best,
Bryan



Bryan Garaventa
Principal Accessibility Architect
Level Access, Inc.
Bryan.Garaventa@LevelAccess.com<mailto:Bryan.Garaventa@LevelAccess.com>
415.624.2709 (o)
www.LevelAccess.com<http://www.levelaccess.com/>

From: Peter Weil <peter.weil@wisc.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 2, 2021 5:34 AM
To: Bryan Garaventa <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>; 'Louise Lister' <Louise.Lister@iop.org>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org; kerscher@montana.com
Subject: Re: FW: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

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Thanks Bryan and Matt.

Does anyone know why are these aria-roles are documented separately from the roles developers are probably more familiar with in https://w3c.github.io/aria/? If they are usable in the web context, it seems as though they deserve some mention in the latter (unless I’ve missed something).

Also, do these roles communicate any information directly to the user, or only to the assistive technologies users might be using?

Peter


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Peter Weil, Web Developer
University Marketing
University of Wisconsin–Madison
peter.weil@wisc.edu<mailto:peter.weil@wisc.edu>
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