Re: Request for advice on <canvas> accessibility

On Thu, 16 Jul 2009, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:22:28 +0200, Steven Faulkner
> <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 3. rephrase the question:  what would need to be added to the canvas 
> > API so that the UI controls in the example could have programmtic 
> > focus (like an area on an image map) name, role and state information 
> > provided.
> 
> This is pushing into the area of solutions to actually difficult 
> problems posed by canvas, which I think involves building something like 
> an ARIA-tree in the DOM. In my ideal vision this would be backed by some 
> actual fallback like SVG, with real markup objects, but I imagine that 
> may of the use cases for canvas mitigate against that anyway.
> 
> As Jonas noted elsewhere, to a certain extent this leaves us relying on 
> authors to do the right thing, rather than having it happen 
> automatically. But in some cases (like the table stuff, which took 
> almost no time to get re-implemented at Opera by one designer) it's not 
> complicated and best practice can be spread reasonably easily. In 
> others, it is hard - but as has been noted many times, getting a chance 
> at making a few important things accessible is better than rejecting the 
> baby with the bathwater of misuse and ineffective attempts. At least if 
> you rely on accessible content to take part in society, which many 
> people do.

So what should the spec say?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 16 July 2009 23:16:04 UTC