- From: James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>
- Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:32:47 -0700
- To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: Catherine Roy <ecrire@catherine-roy.net>, Debi Orton <oradnio@gmail.com>, Gez Lemon <gez.lemon@gmail.com>, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net>, John Foliot <foliot@wats.ca>, Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no>, "Patrick H. Lauke" <redux@splintered.co.uk>, Philip TAYLOR <p.taylor@rhul.ac.uk>, Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>, Roger Johansson <roger@456bereastreet.com>, Shelley Powers <shelleyp@burningbird.net>, Steve Faulkner <sfaulkner@paciellogroup.com>, W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>, wai-xtech-request@w3.org
Thank you for this request, Ian. There is noticeable divide in the accessibility community. On on side, you have those screaming, "Feature X isn't accessible. Abolish it." On the other side, some would rather have discussions such as, "Feature X isn't accessible yet, but it provides obvious benefit to those using it. Instead of stifling innovation with futile attempts to abolish a useful new feature, let's figure out how to make it work for everyone." One of the options on the table for WAI-ARIA 2.0 is to discuss new DOM methods and other programatic interfaces in addition to the roles, states, and properties that exist now. The discussion was tabled for WAI-ARIA 1.0 in the interest of completing a 1.0 last call. Content attributes are the lowest common denominators for any DOM-compliant language (including HTML and SVG) so the PF Working Group decided to revisit other programmatic methods in a later version. I, admittedly, haven't thought about this problem in depth, but it seems that canvas (or any DOM element for that matter) could be special-cased to allow a programmatic representation of the data displayed, along with an any relevant accessibility information and interaction methods. I have no ideas for how to make this "automatic" like you request, but I'm sure we can come to a reasonable solution that would allow accessibility-conscious authors to make their canvas- based applications accessible. Cheers, James Craig On Jun 26, 2009, at 3:53 PM, Ian Hickson wrote: > It has been suggested that the <canvas> feature in HTML5 should have > an > accessibililty solution more thorough that its current solution, > which is > based on the <object> fallback model. > > To this end, I would like to look to the W3C WAI groups for guidance > on > this issue. > > To help me understand how <canvas> could be made more accessible, I > would > like to work from a concrete example: > > http://www.whatwg.org/issues/data.html > > This page uses <canvas> to generate a graph. Could I ask for advice on > what the best possible way to make this page universally accessible > would > be? I would like to maintain the same visual presentation, but would > like > to make this page accessible to users of ATs. > > Could the WAI groups provide sample pages showing how, in an ideal > world, > with whatever APIs or accessibility hooks need to be made available, > the > page could be made accessible, while still maintaining its current > dynamic > generation and visual presentation? > > My goal here is to determine what the best APIs and other technical > solutions would be to provide good accessibility as automatically as > possible for people using <canvas>. I hope the combined accessibility > expertise of the WAI groups will be able to design a solution for this > that we can use in HTML5. > > I am at a loss personally as to how to do this. Any help would be > greatly > appreciated on this issue. > > Cheers, > -- > Ian Hickson >
Received on Saturday, 27 June 2009 00:33:29 UTC