RE: What is the current situation with ARIA and accordion?

I think we just need to see a live example of what's recommended in the 
style guide, or at least something close.

- Aaron



From:
"Victor Tsaran" <vtsaran@yahoo-inc.com>
To:
"James Craig" <jcraig@apple.com>, "Earl Johnson" <earlj.biker@gmail.com>
Cc:
<wai-xtech@w3.org>
Date:
09/05/2008 02:08 AM
Subject:
RE: What is the current situation with ARIA and accordion?



Hi James,
I am from Windows world primarily but do completely agree with you that 
Voiceover's approach to interacting with complex widget is the best one. 
It does get a bit tedious at times, particularly for simple widgets, but 
for complex ones I don't think there is a better solution.
"Interact with" approach would elliminate a lot of keyboard presses and 
will make for a more granular object-oriented interaction model.
The only issue will be educating the user and necessary tweaks for the 
Windows AT software.
 
 
Regards,
Victor
 

From: wai-xtech-request@w3.org [mailto:wai-xtech-request@w3.org] On Behalf 
Of James Craig
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 3:40 PM
To: Earl Johnson
Cc: wai-xtech@w3.org WAI-XTECH
Subject: Re: What is the current situation with ARIA and accordion?

The discussion in today's call was whether or not the accordion control 
could be handled by one of the existing roles such as tree, tabpanel, or 
list. I submit that Earl's example conforms to the behavior of a 
single-column treegrid. Single-select accordion panels could be treegrids 
as well.

We still need to address the expected behavior of widgets within widgets. 
My opinion, although admittedly biased, is that VoiceOver's "interact with 
[widget]" navigation model is the best approach, and would eliminate the 
need for most of the excessively complex keyboard interactions defined in 
the AOL style guide.


On Sep 4, 2008, at 3:21 PM, Earl Johnson wrote:

If you'll accept a buggy keynav example for the accordion component, check 
out the following link - you may need to use the mouse or get lost 
visually ...:
   http://webdev2.sun.com/example/faces/accordion/a11yAccordion.jsp

btw - Sun was correct when the keysequence proposal was approved, now I'm 
a free agent.

ej


On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Al Gilman wrote:

On 2 Sep 2008, at 7:19 PM, Victor Tsaran wrote:

Hello all,
I know that in early stages of ARIA there was a proposal for accordion. 
Earl Johnson from Sun has written a "complete proposal" for accordion 
http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide#accordion as part of the DHTML Style 
Guide,. However, there are no ARIA roles and states that describe the 
actual widget in all its incarnations, e.g. single panels, multiple 
expanded panels etc. I understand that one of the suggestions is to use 
appropriate roles and states for the job, e.g. menus, tab panels, 
treeviews etc. However, this may not always be a desirable option, 
particularly for distributable components.
What is the plan for accordions going forward?
Should we contribute our own findings and/or proposal for this widget?

There are serious problems with adding a special role for the accordion 
widget.
The accessibility APIs and assistive technologies don't know this role at 
present.

.. but we're (PFWG) weakening, and have decided to give it a second look.

Can we have references to some live examples from the web?

Worked examples illustrating a proposed design pattern for the best 
practices
would be the ultimate; but for now just some examples that work with eyes
and keyboard showing multi-selectability and some or all of Earl's 
keystroke
functions.