MSAA role mappings in a11y API guide

The HTML to Platform Accessibility APIs Implementation Guide [1]
currently includes mappings for MSAA. Given the somewhat legacy status
of that API, we would like to remove the separate MSAA mappings, and
instead provide mappings as has been done with the ARIA User Agent
Implementation Guide [2]. That is, we would note instead mappings for
"MSAA + UIA Express" and "MSAA + IAccessible2".

We would additionally add a section about other accessibility
implementations. For instance, this section would include an updated
version of the current note about Firefox and Chrome's use of MSAA
VARIANT [3] to read as follows:

"In MSAA, the VARIANT returned by the IAccessible::get_accRole method
is limited to a finite number of integer role constants insufficient
for describing every HTML element, especially new elements introduced
by HTML5. To address this limitation, some user agents, e.g., Firefox
and Chrome in cooperation with some screen readers, have elected to
expose new roles by returning a string value in that VARIANT in a way
that is not described by the MSAA specification."

Are there any concerns with the above approach?

Alex, does the above change to the note about FF and Chrome address
the concerns you had with it [4]?

Thanks,

Jason


[1] http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-api-map/raw-file/tip/Overview.html

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#mapping_role_table

[3] http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-api-map/raw-file/tip/Overview.html#note_variant

[4] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=16769#c2

Received on Thursday, 20 September 2012 01:49:58 UTC