Re: ARIA should require DOM mutation event support for compliance.

Boris,

The AT needs to be able to know when parts of the document change to
support live regions as well. There needs to be some formal way for the AT
to register and be notified of document mutation events whether they are
through the DOM API or not. There are platform accessibility API that can
be used to allow the AT to listen for these types of change events and not
necessarily by accessing the DOM.

I don't believe this belongs in the ARIA specification but rather the user
agent implementers guide.

Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer


                                                                           
             Boris Zbarsky                                                 
             <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU                                             
             >                                                          To 
             Sent by:                  Joseph Scheuhammer                  
             wai-xtech-request         <clown@utoronto.ca>                 
             @w3.org                                                    cc 
                                       Aaron M                             
                                       Leventhal/Cambridge/IBM@IBMUS,      
             12/09/2008 03:46          wai-xtech@w3.org,                   
             PM                        wai-xtech-request@w3.org            
                                                                   Subject 
                                       Re: ARIA should require DOM         
                                       mutation event support for          
                                       compliance.                         
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           





Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
> Webapp scripts are written to listen for various events, and handle as
> appropriate.  Having to also poll for changes that an external agent may
> or may not make is not an option.

Sure.

>> Even more alternately, authors could ignore the SHOULD-level
requirement.
> Even if they do, the possibility remains that ATs might change aria-*
> attributes, and the scripts need to handle this.

Agreed.  Just saying that this doesn't mean that a UA can't
ARIA-compliant without implementing mutation events.

-Boris