Re: Using title for ARIA name is impractical!

> Not exactly, a sighted user is getting a lot more from all the visual 
context supplied through images, CSS and other techniques. 

In the image case, the label would be the alt text for the image, and you 
can use labelledby to point to the image.

> Yes, "most" is the key! :) 

Yep. It's the key :)

I'd like to get a handle on the real use cases for this. I wasn't 
convinced that an IM buddylist needs a special label that sighted users 
don't see.

- Aaron



From:
Srinivas Annam <annams@google.com>
To:
Aaron M Leventhal/Cambridge/IBM@IBMUS
Cc:
sailesh.panchang@deque.com, wai-xtech@w3.org, wai-xtech-request@w3.org
Date:
07/24/2008 10:44 PM
Subject:
Re: Using title for ARIA name is impractical!




On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 1:06 PM, Aaron M Leventhal <aleventh@us.ibm.com> 
wrote:

Sri, to answer the original question you had, ARIA isn't implementing 
title. The title attribute is part of HTML from a long way back. 
ARIA just discusses where title text fits into the general name 
computation algorithm. So ARIA really has nothing to do with the tooltip. 

That may be, but given that ARIA is meant to live within the browser, we 
just can't ignore browser implications.
 


But I thought the more interesting question was, should ARIA provide a 
more convenient mechanism than aria-labelledby to provide accessible 
names, like aria-name, to avoid the need for hidden labels. It's clear 
that the side effect for tooltip makes it undesirable for developers. I'm 
just not sure the use case of having special accessible names rendered 
only for non-sighted users is that common for widgets which are not built 
from images, that we need to have yet another mechanism. 
 
I was saying that something list a chat listbox that has no label for 
sighted users doesn't really need a special name. The screen reader will 
use the previously active item as the name, which is all the sighted user 
gets as well. 

Not exactly, a sighted user is getting a lot more from all the visual 
context supplied through images, CSS and other techniques. So, ARIA should 
provide more ways to compensate (or provide the opportunity to compensate) 
for any such missing information through something like aria-name.
 
In most cases we shouldn't be adding these hidden labels, IMO. 

Yes, "most" is the key! :) 



- Aaron. 


From: 
Srinivas Annam <annams@google.com> 
To: 
sailesh.panchang@deque.com 
Cc: 
wai-xtech@w3.org, wai-xtech-request@w3.org 
Date: 
07/24/2008 07:25 PM
Subject: 
Re: Using title for ARIA name is impractical!





On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 6:34 AM, Sailesh Panchang <
sailesh.panchang@deque.com> wrote: 

> that makes me ask, why do screen reader users even need a name for
>something if sighted people don't have one? 
A list box is a UI element - a form control and it needs to be associated
with a label (SC 1.3.1 of WCAG2 or checkpoint 12.4 of WCAG1). Where the
design cannot accommodate a visible label, then a title attribute is
typically used on the INPUT or SELECT element in HTML. In this case 
without
a visible label a screen reader user may not realize which list box has
focus. So a title is a workable substitute.
The title is correctly displayed by the browser for the container and
contained elements when moused over. That is the expected behavior. What 
is
displayed against the div element is not unrelated to the options under it
and may actually help more than one disability group. I checked with 
several
colleagues here and they do not regard the tooltip display as a nightmare 
or
as something impractical. 

I believe your colleagues are talking tooltips in general, not tooltips 
when they are expected or unwanted. As I described in my Gmail example 
where a popup is expected as you hover over a contact, tooltip is 
definitely is unwanted and impractical. 

By taking only simplististic cases and convincing that ARIA fully 
addresses those cases will create a situation where an application 
developer will be forced to make choices which will make ARIA web as 
standards-compliant as what the rest of the web is today! :( 

Whether we like it or not complex widgets are here to stay. We do need to 
consider them and provide for situations like this to grow ARIA and allow 
it to be used in every situation.

Coming back to my original question, why is that ARIA forcing me to get 
the "tooltip side effect" in order for me to get an @name on these roles? 
Why can't I as an application developer have the choice to get the @name 
as I want it without showing a tooltip to the user?


>If sighted users are figuring it out from context then why not screen
>reader users? 
Sure no problem... expose the context programmatically so that  screen
reading software can determine the context. That is the purpose served by
these various attributes, right?
Please also consider: double click to make a selection is not the 
convention
in a list box for a mouse user. 
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

-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Leventhal [mailto:aaronleventhal@moonset.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 4:40 PM
To: Srinivas Annam
Cc: sailesh.panchang@deque.com; wai-xtech@w3.org
Subject: Re: Using title for ARIA name is impractical!

Personally I'm wavering back and forth on this one.

Pro:
I can see Sri's point. As a developer, if I'm writing a chat app, I
might like the screen reader users to get a nice name for the listbox.
It just makes the experience smoother.

Con:
OTOH this is one more thing to localize, so I personally might avoid it.
In fact that makes me ask, why do screen reader users even need a name
for something if sighted people don't have one? To me the use case of
showing something to one set of users and not another is not so major.
If sighted users are figuring it out from context then why not screen
reader users? (There may very well be an answer for that, I just don't
know it as I'm not a screen reader user myself).

Also, adding aria-name does make the accessible name processing
algorithm slightly more complicated.

- Aaron

Srinivas Annam wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 12:15 PM, Sailesh Panchang<
> sailesh.panchang@deque.com>  wrote:
>
>>   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 tooltip is useful when you see it once, but it becomes an annoyance
when
> it shows up every time you are hovering for some other reason. Going 
back
to
> my Gmail example there is a popup that shows as hover over a single
contact,
> now imagine seeing two things one the hover popup you wanted and the
second
> is the tooltip. This is clearly a UI nightmare.
>
> Again, one point I am trying to make is why is that an application
developer
> is being forced to get the side effect of tooltip when the intent is to
> provide the aria name.
>
>> 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/

Received on Thursday, 24 July 2008 22:10:17 UTC