RE: Using title for ARIA name is impractical!

I went back to the first email and read the issue had noted:

"At this time you would notice that hovering over with mouse on anywhere
over the listbox area (including where the individual items are shown) would
show a tooltip with the title. This is coming in as a side effect of browser
usage of title for the tooltip. Given this major UI implication, IMO, this
makes the usage of title to get an acc name on the roles mentioned highly
impractical. I would like to hear other thoughts or ideas".

Comment:

The title is read  by the screen reader not while arrowing up and down the
list box items but as one tabs in and out of the list box along with the
item selected which is ok for a keyboard user.

So my question is : What is impractical about the tool tip being displayed
as one mouses over the items in a list box? 

The title attribute in HTML on the opening container tag  (even on FORM or
UL or map) is displayed on all contained items if one mouses over them. This
is standard behavior in IE and Firefox for a long time and no one has
objected to this. 

(It is another matter that screen readers do not read title on all elements
and I have in the past suggested to FS and GWMicro to change this).  

I understand the more serious issue for a mouse user is that one has to
double click to make a selection which is not the convention in a list box.

Sailesh Panchang
Accessibility Services Manager (Web and Software)
Deque Systems Inc. (www.deque.com)
11130 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite #140,
Reston VA 20191
Phone: 703-225-0380 (ext 105)
E-mail: sailesh.panchang@deque.com

  _____  

From: wai-xtech-request@w3.org [mailto:wai-xtech-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Srinivas Annam
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 12:53 PM
To: Aaron Leventhal
Cc: dev-accessibility@lists.mozilla.org; wai-xtech@w3.org
Subject: Re: Using title for ARIA name is impractical!

 

Hi Aaron,

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 1:29 AM, Aaron Leventhal
<aaronleventhal@moonset.net> wrote:

Hi Sri,

I have the idea, although I had not seen a scenario where you want the
menu text to be different from what's shown visually yet. 


Not different, but the text is not being shown visually at all in these
cases. Here are some scenarios -

1.	You have a listbox (visually not titled), which takes focus on
itself and subsequently on it's list items. Provide a title on the listbox
which has the outermost div and the option items being inside. The title
provided on the listbox bleeds through as I hover over on any of the option
items. (see the modified listbox example I sent earlier)
2.	Have a menu button (with a role of button and haspopup is set to
true), the button has it's own text and drop down arrow will show a popup
menu and set the focus to popup. Adding a title on the popup menu will
introduce a tooltip as I hover over any of the menu items.
3.	Similarly a tree having the outermost div and a title. Hovering on
the tree items will show the title as tooltip.

When I first encountered the issue I did not see it so much as a bug in the
browser, but I do want to understand why you think it is. What is the
expected behavior when you have a title on a div, should the tooltip be
shown across the entire area that the div is covering or not (since there is
no title for the child elements)? Would love to hear your thoughts.

-- Srinivas
 

How common do
you think that is? I take your idea seriously but would like to know
when/why that happens.  Is it because of the Firefox bug where the
hidden descendants are showing up in the name? (Because, if it's because
of a bug I don't think we should add a new feature; we should
just fix the bug instead).

- Aaron


Srinivas Annam wrote:
> I would like to provide an additional example in the hopes of clarifying.
> Take the scenario I would have used title which is also the case where I
> don't have the text for acc name anywhere else. So by using
aria-labelledby
> for such case you would have to serve the additional bytes which when
> multiplied by the number of times used in your application and repeated
over
> millions of downloads it can make a huge difference in application
> performance.
>
> Here I have code snippets for each case -
>
> *<div class="ofscr" id="stid">*My menu name*</div>*
> <div role="menu" *aria-labelledby="stid"*>
>    ... items go here
> </div>
>
> vs.
>
> **<div role="menu" *aria-name="*My menu name*"*>
>    ... items go here
> </div>
>
>> From above you can see that there is a difference of 48 bytes per usage,
now
> multiply that by three. Now, assume that you have 1M page servings / day,
> you get 144MB of extra bytes to be served, all because I couldn't use a
> title! :) Hope you get the idea.
>
> Thanks,

> Srinivas

>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 9:10 AM, Srinivas Annam<annams@google.com>  wrote:
>
>> Jon,
>>
>> My point is aria-labelledby is a good work around but we should not
>> *forced* to use it all the time. Additionally, I can not imagine names of
>> menus and listboxes lying around in all of today's practical
applications.
>>
>> I think we all agreed that because of the tooltip overload title has
become
>> unusable, given that I am proposing that we create an alternate and
>> equivalent, such as aria-name in its place.
>>
>> Srinivas
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 8:02 AM, Jon
Gunderson<jongund@illinois.edu>wrote:
>>
>>> Srinivas,
>>>
>>> Personally I like aria-labelledby by since it is very flexible to reuse
>>> content already on the page and could actually be configurable if the
web
>>> application, if the developer provides an interface for the user to
>>> configure what is included in the aria-labelledby list of IDREFs.
>>>
>>> Example:
>>>
>>> http://test.cita.uiuc.edu/aria/grid/grid2.php
>>>
>>> Jon
>>>
>>>
>>> ---- Original message ----
>>>> Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:14:02 -0700
>>>> From: Srinivas Annam<annams@google.com>
>>>> Subject: Re: Using title for ARIA name is impractical!
>>>> To: Jon Gunderson<jongund@illinois.edu>
>>>> Cc: dev-accessibility@lists.mozilla.org, wai-xtech@w3.org
>>>>
>>>>    Let me clarify this, my question is directly towards
>>>>    roles that support title as a way of providing acc
>>>>    name -- getting name from child content or
>>>>    aria-labelledby are different use cases which are
>>>>    not at discussion here. Given the side effect of
>>>>    title to provide a tooltip for mouse hover can there
>>>>    be or should there be an alternate mechanism? Why
>>>>    not have aria-name which can provide the same
>>>>    purpose but without the side effect?
>>>>
>>>>    -- Srinivas
>>>>
>>>>    On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 2:47 PM, Jon Gunderson
>>>>    <jongund@illinois.edu>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>      Srinivas,
>>>>
>>>>      The "option" role will use the DOM subtree text
>>>>      nodes to generate an accessible name for each
>>>>      option.
>>>>      Jon
>>>>
>>>>      ---- Original message ----
>>>>      >Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:02:41 -0700
>>>>      >From: Srinivas Annam<annams@google.com>
>>>>      >Subject: Using title for ARIA name is
>>>>      impractical!
>>>>      >To: dev-accessibility@lists.mozilla.org
>>>>      >Cc: wai-xtech@w3.org
>>>>      >
>>>>      >In my continuing series of ARIA discoveries :)
>>>>      >
>>>>      >The current recommendation requires the usage of
>>>>      title attribute to provide
>>>>      >a name for widgets of the following roles:
>>>>      combobox, grid, group, img, list,
>>>>      >listbox, menu, menubar, progressbar, radiogroup,
>>>>      slider, spinbutton,
>>>>      >textbox, tree, treegrid.
>>>>      >
>>>>      >Now imagine a listbox or a tree with lot of
>>>>      visible child elements and that
>>>>      >each of these widgets (lisbox and options) are
>>>>      being created using a div.
>>>>      >The outerdiv for the listbox having it's role as
>>>>      "listbox" and each of the
>>>>      >list items having a role of "option". Now, assume
>>>>      that the listbox has a
>>>>      >title defined on it (so it could provide an acc
>>>>      name per current
>>>>      >recommendation) like below:
>>>>      >
>>>>      ><div role="listbox" title="My Own Listbox"
>>>>      >aria-activedescendant="listbox1-1">
>>>>      >   <div role="option" id="listbox1-1"
>>>>      class="selected"
>>>>      >aria-selected="true">item 1</div>
>>>>      >   <div role="option" id="listbox1-2">item
>>>>      2</div>
>>>>      >   <div role="option" id="listbox1-3">item
>>>>      3</div>
>>>>      ></div>
>>>>      >
>>>>      >At this time you would notice that hovering over
>>>>      with mouse on anywhere over
>>>>      >the listbox area (including where the individual
>>>>      items are shown) would show
>>>>      >a tooltip with the title. This is coming in as a
>>>>      side effect of browser
>>>>      >usage of title for the tooltip. Given this major
>>>>      UI implication, IMO, this
>>>>      >makes the usage of title to get an acc name on
>>>>      the roles mentioned highly
>>>>      >impractical. I would like to hear other thoughts
>>>>      or ideas. Or if someone
>>>>      >knows a way of getting ARIA name without using a
>>>>      title.
>>>>      >
>>>>      >Thanks,
>>>>      >Srinivas
>>>>      >
>>>>      >--
>>>>      >Srinivas Annam
>>>>      >Software Engineer, Accessibility
>>>>      >Google, Inc.
>>>>      >Cell: 408.898.4928
>>>>      >Email: annams@google.com
>>>>      >_______________________________________________
>>>>      >dev-accessibility mailing list
>>>>      >dev-accessibility@lists.mozilla.org
>>>>      >https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-accessibility
>>>>      Jon Gunderson, Ph.D.
>>>>      Coordinator Information Technology Accessibility
>>>>      Disability Resources and Educational Services
>>>>
>>>>      Rehabilitation Education Center
>>>>      Room 86
>>>>      1207 S. Oak Street
>>>>      Champaign, Illinois 61821
>>>>
>>>>      Voice: (217) 244-5870
>>>>
>>>>      WWW: http://www.cita.uiuc.edu/
>>>>      WWW: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jongund/www/
>>>>
>>>>    --
>>>>    Srinivas Annam
>>>>    Software Engineer, Accessibility
>>>>    Google, Inc.
>>>>    Cell: 408.898.4928
>>>>    Email: annams@google.com
>>> Jon Gunderson, Ph.D.
>>> Coordinator Information Technology Accessibility
>>> Disability Resources and Educational Services
>>>
>>> Rehabilitation Education Center
>>> Room 86
>>> 1207 S. Oak Street
>>> Champaign, Illinois 61821
>>>
>>> Voice: (217) 244-5870
>>>
>>> WWW: http://www.cita.uiuc.edu/
>>> WWW: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jongund/www/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Srinivas Annam
>> Software Engineer, Accessibility
>> Google, Inc.
>> Cell: 408.898.4928
>> Email: annams@google.com
>>
>
>
>

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-- 
Srinivas Annam
Software Engineer, Accessibility
Google, Inc.
Cell: 408.898.4928
Email: annams@google.com

Received on Wednesday, 23 July 2008 19:20:45 UTC