Re: Handling of landmark roles on native markup

Hi Aaron,
I was aware of the firefox behaviour,
I think it would be better to get firefox to remove its implemenation until
all vendors are on board with the change.
Unless we can get IE to change its implementation as well, this will not be
usable as its use breaks the semantics for non supporting user agents.

Are you thinking of extending the behaviour beyond landmarks?

regards
Steve


On 16 March 2012 18:24, Aaron Leventhal - Code <aaronlevbugs@gmail.com>wrote:

> I recently discovered that Firefox and WebKit-based browsers handle
> landmarks differently.
>
> WebKit implements the current ARIA implementation guide at
> http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#mapping_role --
> "For the standard role mechanism of the accessibility API, the user agent
> *MUST* use the first token in the sequence of tokens in the role attribute<http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#def_attribute>
>  value <http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#def_value> which
> matches, on comparison, the name of any non-abstract WAI-ARIA role."
>
> Firefox/Gecko implements an older version of the implementation guide at
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-implementation-20090224/#mapping_role
> "The first role token with a known mapping to accessibility APIs SHOULD be
> used when mapping to the accessibility API via the standard role mechanism
> of the accessibility API. Use the role table below and apply any special
> case rules that are specified."
>
> As I see it, there are two advantages to the older system:
> 1. The landmark role can complement native semantics without clobbering
> them, e.g.
>  <input type="text" role="search">
>  <table role="complementary">
>  <ul role="navigation">
> 2. It enables forward compatibility of ARIA-enabled content with future
> browsers and platforms, as fallback roles can be used. For example, <table
> role="calendar grid"> allows newer platforms who understand a "calendar"
> role to map directly to that, but previous versions which did not know
> about "calendar", would fall back on "grid", still a valid, usable role.
>
> I'd like to help sync the browser implementations on this issue. My
> (opinion) is that the older role processing is better for the reasons given
> above. I would love to hear other opinions.
>
> Thanks as always,
> Aaron
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG

www.paciellogroup.com | www.HTML5accessibility.com |
www.twitter.com/stevefaulkner
HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives -
dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/
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