- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 01:30:15 +0100
- To: Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>
- Cc: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown@alum.mit.edu>, "wai-xtech@w3.org" <wai-xtech@w3.org>
Janina Sajka, Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:35:54 -0500: > Leif Halvard Silli writes: >> I gather that you have faith in ARIA as such, but not in this detail. >> It would be interesting to know why. > > The ARIA TF is still considering LC comments, especially on the UAIG. > The Status Sections in our documents clearly say not to rely on them. > Yet, the docs are being cited as though the guidance there is settled. > That's wrong and can easily be disruptive. ARIA 1.0 present itself as a Candidate Recommendation. I could not find support for the claim that CRs 'clearly say not to rely on them': http://www.w3.org/2004/02/Process-20040205/tr.html#RecsCR Anyway: I see that my question was a bit unclear: What I wanted to ask was about that detail in ARIA which says that elements reference by aria-describedby SHOULD be presented with *native semantics*: It sounded as if you, for elements that have been hidden with the @hidden attribute did not believe that AT and UAs would be able to present the native semantics. But I guess it was also a pretty pointless question: During the working group's work with ISSUE-204, the evidence - or lack thereof - will be key. > The proper course, imho, would be to reach out the the ARIA TF (or PF > itself) and ask. The fact hat aria-describedby can point to sections that are hidden - in ARIA's sense of 'hidden' - is something I have reconciled myself with long ago: Having accepted how ARIA defines it, then the question of whether ARIA-describedby should be permitted to point to elements that are hidden with the use of the host language's @hidden attribute, seems like more of an HTML5-conformance issue than an ARIA issue. PS: As far as I can tell, then ARIA 1.0 does not put *any* restriction on point to hidden elements. The only thing it puts a restriction on is the use of aria-hidden=true: Unless the element really *is* hidden - with some technique or another - for all medias and user groups, then there is only a MAY permission to use it. That is: If the element is visible, but should be removed from the A11Y tree, the there is only MAY permission to do that. > In fact none of this discussion was even cross-posted > to the HTML-A11Y TF though we've repeatedly asked the HTML Chairs to > please do so when issues of particular interest arose on the main WG > list. So, OK, I did spot the issue and advised our group. We will > discuss the HTML approach, together with the various approaches we've > been considering. They chairs must speak for themselves. But I too was not aware of HTML5's permission to point to elements that have been hidden with the @hidden attribute. It was only when Laura informed the group, that this was known to me. The chairs did, however, in December, note that Jonas had this in his proposal - and asked him to justify it. From my own point of view, I supported Laura's recent revert request. But I expressed my support in terms of pointing to the chair's request for justification. Since the part of ARIA 1.0 where it speaks about aria-describedby, is pretty well known to me, I was difficult to be shocked by the thing itself, though. Frankly: It does not seem fruitful to discuss ISSUE-204 in the light of what impact it could have on @longdesc: Such a thing only looks as if one is so married to an issue that one refuses to discuss other issues on their own merits. > The point is that the whole of ARIA is at stake, not just how to get > around longdesc with clever tricks. 3 questions - from least to most important: A: Why do we view ISSUE-204 in light of its *possible* @longdesc impact? B: Which problems other than the those related to @longdesc? C: What is *the* problem? > ARIA-Hidden is there for a number of reasons and use cases that are > fairly complicated to think through clearly. And yet, that is what we > have to do to insure that ARIA is a robust and reliable specification. > The HTML-WG doesn't, of course, have that kind of stake in ARIA success. While I have not specced ARIA, I have read parts of many times, I have offered feedback in a last call period and I have struggled with understanding it - including testing how AT interprets it. So, at least I am not *completely* unfamiliar with aria-hidden and its use cases. I think it is a bit wrong to focus on the fact that elements that are hidden with aria-hidden are still presented to the user via aria-describedby. It seems more correct to focus on - and to say - that there is nothing that escapes @aria-describedby: Everything aria-describedby points to, becomes gold - ah - a description. Because, there are many, many ways to hide an element, apart from using aria-hidden. E.g. if an element has role=img, then its children are automatically hidden too. But aria-describedby and aria-labelledby don't care: All they point to get presented. > So, my answer to you, the thing I keep asking myself in all of this--yet > another Latin phrase--Cui bono.? To whom does *what* benefit? -- Leif H Silli
Received on Saturday, 18 February 2012 00:30:50 UTC