Re: Summarizing the contentious history of re-opened PFWG-ISSUE-348: Consider renaming (now actually 'deprecating' in ARIA 1.1) role="presentation" to avoid avoid author confusion

The response I've gotten in the past regarding a "" value for an attribute 
is 'why bother when it's empty anyway'. It's an ambiguous concept, and for 
something like role=presentation that has the potential to screw things up 
if mis-used, I'd recommend using an explicit role value that clearly 
indicates it's purpose.

For example, I once saw a developer apply role=presentation to literally 
every tag as part of a CMS in the incorrect belief that it meant 'to 
present', which made the entire site totally inaccessible when it was 
rendered.

I think role="span" would have the same problem, because it may be confused 
with the span tag by some developers. Another example that I've seen for 
instance, is the tendency to put roles that sound like particular roles on 
related tags, such as putting role=radio on Inputs with type=radio, 
role=textbox on Inputs with type=text and Textareas, etc. I can see the same 
developers putting role="span" on every span tag on the page.

Plus, regarding "" values in general, developers may sometimes put such 
attributes within CMSs as placeholder attributes, and this may have a huge 
negative impact if it causes screen readers to behave in a particular manner 
simply by doing this.

It would be great if the role didn't specifically match any particular tag, 
and also indicated it's intended purpose, EG "void", "null" ? I can 
appreciate the difficulty in doing this.

Btw, so many things were discussed during the ftf meeting that I'm having 
trouble recalling all of the topics. Do you know if there is a list of 
resolution/action items compiled for the total that I could take a look at 
to refresh my memory?

Also, for James, is the open source reverse role lookup project public yet 
to take a look at? Or is this still in concept phase at the moment?

Thanks,
Bryan



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cynthia Shelly" <cyns@microsoft.com>
To: "James Craig" <jcraig@apple.com>
Cc: "Bryan Garaventa" <bryan.garaventa@whatsock.com>; "T.V Raman" 
<raman@google.com>; <jongund@illinois.edu>; <jason@jasonjgw.net>; 
<wai-xtech@w3.org>; <w3c-wai-pf@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 5:32 PM
Subject: RE: Summarizing the contentious history of re-opened 
PFWG-ISSUE-348: Consider renaming (now actually 'deprecating' in ARIA 1.1) 
role="presentation" to avoid avoid author confusion


Hmmm....
People don't like alt="" and may not like this for similar reasons.

It can sometimes it can be difficult to teach, especially to people who 
don't really know the difference between null, empty string, none, blank and 
space.  There are many such people creating web content, though they are 
less likely to deal with aria than with alt.

Other than that issue, I've always been ok with alt="".  Does anyone recall 
why people dislike it?


-----Original Message-----
From: James Craig [mailto:jcraig@apple.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 5:26 PM
To: Cynthia Shelly
Cc: Bryan Garaventa; T.V Raman; jongund@illinois.edu; jason@jasonjgw.net; 
wai-xtech@w3.org; w3c-wai-pf@w3.org WAI-PFWG
Subject: Re: Summarizing the contentious history of re-opened 
PFWG-ISSUE-348: Consider renaming (now actually 'deprecating' in ARIA 1.1) 
role="presentation" to avoid avoid author confusion

What about role=""? An explicitly empty string for the role value could be a 
synonym for role="presentation"

On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:54 PM, Cynthia Shelly <cyns@microsoft.com> wrote:

> Some of other ideas...
>
> Role=text

FWIW, text is already on the table as a 1.1 role.

ISSUE-435: Consider role="text" to expose elements (and contents) as static 
text node
https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/issues/435

> Role=plaintext
> Role=notag
> Role=layout (nice for tables, less sure about other tags) Role=span
>
> I kind of like role=span.  I think it will be really obvious to html devs 
> what this does.  It will be a little goofy to devs moving from Windows and 
> other native platform APIs to web, but I think the parallel to HTML will 
> be fairly easy to explain to them.
>
> I'd use something else for decorative images.
> Maybe
> Role=decoration
> Role=deco
> Or keep presentation for this use, as it's pretty similar and widely 
> deployed.
>
> That could be combined with alt/longdesc/aria-describedby etc. to be read 
> on user request, or with aria-hidden to make it silent.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bryan Garaventa [mailto:bryan.garaventa@whatsock.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 1:22 PM
> To: T.V Raman; jongund@illinois.edu
> Cc: jason@jasonjgw.net; wai-xtech@w3.org; w3c-wai-pf@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Summarizing the contentious history of re-opened
> PFWG-ISSUE-348: Consider renaming (now actually 'deprecating' in ARIA
> 1.1) role="presentation" to avoid avoid author confusion
>
> I'm having trouble understanding how role="inline" would convey to a 
> developer that the role would remove the tag from the accessibility tree 
> without hiding or removing any child content. Especially since the role 
> would be applicable to all elements.
>
> The word 'inline' to me, or 'block', seems to imply that it turns block 
> level elements into inline elements or the reverse, which would be an 
> incorrect assumption for developers.
>
> Am I missing something?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "T.V Raman" <raman@google.com>
> To: <jongund@illinois.edu>
> Cc: <jason@jasonjgw.net>; <wai-xtech@w3.org>; <w3c-wai-pf@w3.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 8:54 AM
> Subject: RE: Summarizing the contentious history of re-opened
> PFWG-ISSUE-348: Consider renaming (now actually 'deprecating' in ARIA
> 1.1) role="presentation" to avoid avoid author confusion
>
>
> Jon,
> Borrowing block/inline from CSS  as role values is a good idea; an even 
> better idea is to just mirror over CSS state into the accessibility side, 
> i.e. make display:inline  create an implicit role="inline"  on the ARIA 
> side, rather than asking  authors to write both.
>
> Gunderson, Jon R writes:
>> Another idea is to borrow from the CSS concepts of "block" and "inline".
>>
>> Role="block" and role="inline"
>>
>> This would provide some semantics as to where the "text" content is part 
>> of something that stands on its own (e.g. block), versus part of 
>> something more (e.g. inline).
>>
>> I know Cynthia Shelley and Rich have talked about concatenating text 
>> runs, and this would provide some way to give ATs a hint on how to do 
>> that and developers already have some idea what block and inline mean 
>> from CSS.
> I am not sure how they would interpret "none", just like the confusion 
> over "presentation".
>>
>> Jon
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jason White [mailto:jason@jasonjgw.net]  > Sent: Monday,
>> January 27, 2014 6:12 PM  > To: wai-xtech@w3.org; w3c-wai-pf@w3.org
>> WAI-PFWG  > Subject: Re: Summarizing the contentious history of
>> re-opened
> PFWG-ISSUE-348: Consider renaming (now actually 'deprecating' in ARIA 1.1) 
> role="presentation" to avoid avoid author confusion  >  > James Craig 
> <jcraig@apple.com> wrote:
>>> Thanks for the feedback Suzanne. Whether or not "none" is the best  > > 
>>> replacement is irrelevant. The confusion is not around images. It it  > 
>>>  > around the use of role="presentation" on other elements. For example:
>>>
>>> The following marking: <h4 role="presentation">Foo</h4>  > >  > > is 
>>> effectively the same as: <div>Foo</div>  > >  >  > Perhaps 
>>> role="generic" would be more descriptive for the uninitiated.
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 29 January 2014 04:12:40 UTC