RE: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

Hi,
I’m a bit confused. I read the referenced page at
http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/html/notes.html


And it states the following at the end:

“Should I use the doc-endnote  role?
No. Use of the doc-endnote role is now deprecated due to a technical incompatibility with the core ARIA role module. ARIA does not allow roles from a module
to satisfy the requirements of core roles, so although doc-endnote behaves like a list item, it technically does not fulfill the requirement that lists
have list item children. That makes it invalid in both HTML list elements and as a child of the ARIA list role.”

From the markup examples shown on the example page, it actually highlights an issue I had to programmatically address in the 4X Footnotes module, which is that you can’t use a static in-page link with a hash to reference multiple footnote references that point to the same footnote. For me, I also discovered that in-page links didn’t always work as expected on complex pages, sometimes not moving focus appropriately as needed for the AT to track.

I was able to solve all of these things, but it required building a tracker that will map the last triggered footnote when multiple references are detected, then move focus back to the previously referenced footnote link when the back link was activated. Also the reliability factor was solved by using element.focus() instead of relying on the browser to handle proper focus movement, which also allowed for an optional animation effect to be added for smooth scrolling.

When the tracker was not included, focus would always go to the first footnote link, which at times may be far removed from where the actual footnote link that was activated was located, causing significant accessibility issues for keyboard-only users and making the user have to manually scroll back to where they were located previously. This was particularly noticeable on legal documents where the same terms were defined in 1 footnote whenever encountered throughout the document, which I saw at times for significantly large docs where over 20 footnotes would sometimes reference the same footnote, and it was critically important for the user to always go back to the same footnote link that was originally triggered.

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: kerscher@montana.com <kerscher@montana.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 4, 2021 9:03 AM
To: 'Jordan Rogers' <jordan.rogers@ioppublishing.org>; 'Peter Weil' <peter.weil@wisc.edu>; Bryan Garaventa <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>; 'Louise Lister' <Louise.Lister@iop.org>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

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Hi,

I suggest you follow the guidance in the DAISY Knowledge Base at:
http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/html/notes.html


I think example 4 is the one you are suggesting.

I was explaining about some of the issues with extended descriptions. We need to encode things properly, even if the AT is misbehaving. We do report these issues to the various AT vendors when we encounter a problem. We do this at epubtest.org.

I would think that if you have multiple back links at the end of a section, the language on where it is going would be unique. For example, back to note reference 6.

Best
George

From: Jordan Rogers <jordan.rogers@ioppublishing.org<mailto:jordan.rogers@ioppublishing.org>>
Sent: Wednesday, August 4, 2021 9:27 AM
To: kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>; 'Peter Weil' <peter.weil@wisc.edu<mailto:peter.weil@wisc.edu>>; 'Bryan Garaventa' <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com<mailto:bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>>; 'Louise Lister' <Louise.Lister@iop.org<mailto:Louise.Lister@iop.org>>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

Hi George,

Thank you for your response. I’m going to admit I’m a little confused by your feedback. Are you suggesting that it is not recommended to provide links when working with multiple footnotes at the end of the document? Would I be better off following the “Example 2 – Grouped notes at the end of a section/work” and not include any in-page links from body references to footnotes and vice versa?

Many thanks

Jordan Rogers
UI Developer

IOP Publishing | Institute of Physics
Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol
BS1 6HG, UK

Direct line +44 (0)1179301051

ioppublishing.org | www.iop.org<applewebdata://324420FD-7434-4FE5-9832-936BBA0D1D59/www.iop.org>


From: "kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>" <kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>>
Date: Wednesday, 4 August 2021 at 15:59
To: Jordan Rogers <jordan.rogers@ioppublishing.org<mailto:jordan.rogers@ioppublishing.org>>, 'Peter Weil' <peter.weil@wisc.edu<mailto:peter.weil@wisc.edu>>, 'Bryan Garaventa' <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com<mailto:bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>>, 'Louise Lister' <Louise.Lister@iop.org<mailto:Louise.Lister@iop.org>>, "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>
Subject: RE: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

Hello,

In our testing of EPUB reading systems, we find that many times deep linking does not always take you to the  the desired location, e.g. you get to the top of the page and not to the exact location that is referenced. For this reason, we recommend that extended descriptions should be placed in a separate file. You then always get to the extended description. The backlink to where you left off may still be a problem. We have observed this same behavior with various browsers and assistive technologies.

Best
George


From: Jordan Rogers <jordan.rogers@ioppublishing.org<mailto:jordan.rogers@ioppublishing.org>>
Sent: Wednesday, August 4, 2021 4:55 AM
To: kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>; 'Peter Weil' <peter.weil@wisc.edu<mailto:peter.weil@wisc.edu>>; 'Bryan Garaventa' <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com<mailto:bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>>; 'Louise Lister' <Louise.Lister@iop.org<mailto:Louise.Lister@iop.org>>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

Hi Everyone,

I have been keeping track of this email thread as I am currently investigating how to make the ‘References’ section on the digital publishing platform that I work on more accessible. The references are all grouped together at the end of each paper, and each individual reference has a backlink to the reference in the body of the article. I am struggling to figure out how to properly code a group of endnotes that each have a backlink. I have been drafting out the markup for endnotes in a Codepen<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcodepen.io%2Fjrog%2Fpen%2FgOWdMab&data=04%7C01%7Cjordan.rogers%40ioppublishing.org%7Cd347782572e241df770008d95757cd34%7Cf9ee42e6bad04e639115f704f9ccceed%7C0%7C0%7C637636859410245126%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=KMPvYd364H%2BYlQIpFtiopeLz3FVShcqoMmqefZqCwYg%3D&reserved=0>.

In Example 5 on the notes page<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkb.daisy.org%2Fpublishing%2Fdocs%2Fhtml%2Fnotes.html&data=04%7C01%7Cjordan.rogers%40ioppublishing.org%7Cd347782572e241df770008d95757cd34%7Cf9ee42e6bad04e639115f704f9ccceed%7C0%7C0%7C637636859410245126%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=oObOcdyo7CXiYzXdq7F4QTpXgRAuLki%2F%2B9ei4esnYTI%3D&reserved=0>, it is recommended to include a backlink after the endnote, but this is an example of a single endnote. Is it expected to follow this setup for multiple endnotes, because I thought it was bad practice to have multiple links with the same link text, which went to different locations?

For more context, here is a live example of a paper with references<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fiopscience.iop.org%2Farticle%2F10.1088%2F1367-2630%2Fac10a6&data=04%7C01%7Cjordan.rogers%40ioppublishing.org%7Cd347782572e241df770008d95757cd34%7Cf9ee42e6bad04e639115f704f9ccceed%7C0%7C0%7C637636859410245126%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=G2OTF%2FBvVTFOCJ5DGbLmLLozIOeRQ1NsMiSPs8fjDfk%3D&reserved=0> on the platform I work on. References are a collapsed at the end of the page.

Thank you

Jordan Rogers
UI Developer

IOP Publishing | Institute of Physics
Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol
BS1 6HG, UK

Direct line +44 (0)1179301051

ioppublishing.org | www.iop.org<applewebdata://324420FD-7434-4FE5-9832-936BBA0D1D59/www.iop.org>


From: "kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>" <kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>>
Date: Monday, 2 August 2021 at 16:53
To: 'Peter Weil' <peter.weil@wisc.edu<mailto:peter.weil@wisc.edu>>, 'Bryan Garaventa' <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com<mailto:bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>>, 'Louise Lister' <Louise.Lister@iop.org<mailto:Louise.Lister@iop.org>>, "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>
Subject: RE: FW: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes
Resent from: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>
Resent date: Monday, 2 August 2021 at 16:48

Hi,

In our Transition to Accessible EPUB 3 working group (not a W3C working group, we are documenting support in browsers and EPUB reading systems. We plan to publish a set of suggested voiced values that enhance semantics. For example a h2 that is a chapter title could also say “chapter.

Best
George


From: Peter Weil <peter.weil@wisc.edu<mailto:peter.weil@wisc.edu>>
Sent: Monday, August 2, 2021 6:34 AM
To: 'Bryan Garaventa' <bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com<mailto:bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>>; 'Louise Lister' <Louise.Lister@iop.org<mailto:Louise.Lister@iop.org>>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>; kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>
Subject: Re: FW: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

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/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fw3c.github.io%2Faria%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cjordan.rogers%40ioppublishing.org%7Cd347782572e241df770008d95757cd34%7Cf9ee42e6bad04e639115f704f9ccceed%7C0%7C0%7C637636859410255076%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=BulBJhwWcvqltLthDryW5jldqqm4PJ3mOBl7S4eJjdU%3D&reserved=0>? 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


--
Peter Weil, Web Developer
University Marketing
University of Wisconsin–Madison
peter.weil@wisc.edu<mailto:peter.weil@wisc.edu>
(m) 608-220-3089


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