Re: [aapi] live roles

David,

> When a user agent is mapping aria roles to platform roles, sometimes
> there is no good candidate platform role.
So, the situation is:
- the markup element itself defines a role.  In your example, it's <table>.
- the role attribute defines a role.  In your example, role="log".
- there is nothing in the a11y API to map the role attribute value to.

The question is, then:  what to do in terms of publishing a role?

Is that right?

In your example, mapping something that is a "log" to a ROLE_TABLE seems 
wrong.  Tables have little if anything in common with a log.  It looks 
as if the <table> element is being used for presentation here, in which 
case it really should be something like <table role="presentation> ... 
<div role="log" ... .

However, the browser has to deal with the markup it's given.  Intuition 
says look for something in the a11y API that comes close to "log"; that 
is, try to capture the role attribute as best you can.  Since, as you 
note, you are exposing "... expose events and states to capture the 
'live'-ness", isn't there something that would fit better than ROLE_TABLE?

In the end, I guess one would have to fall back on the element itself, 
if nothing better can be found.

> I feel aria is pushing platform accessibility ...

Right.  Time to update a11y APIs.  Or, rather, provide a mechanism to 
extend them.

-- 
Joseph Scheuhammer, Ph.D.
Accessibilty Software Architect
Adaptive Technology Research Centre
University of Toronto

Tel: 416-946-8301
Fax: 416-971-2629

'What did one snowman say to the other snowman?'
             - "Adrift", D. Hume -

Received on Wednesday, 4 March 2009 15:37:12 UTC