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 was wondering about the concept of borrowing from CCS and having the roles: role="block", role="inline".

T.V. Raman seems to like this idea.

They seem to have better semantics than role="none", role="", role="div" or role="span" for an element and its content, plus it builds upon familiarity with CSS technology.

Jon


-----Original Message-----
From: Joanmarie Diggs [mailto:jdiggs@igalia.com] 
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2014 1:15 PM
To: James Craig; Cynthia Shelly
Cc: Bryan Garaventa; T.V Raman; Gunderson, Jon R; 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

Silly question: Why not role="div"?

Web devs are familiar with using <div role="foo"> to convince ATs that a div is a foo. I would think they'd understand/assume <foo role="div"> would accomplish the inverse. Moreover, role="", role="none", role="null", etc. do not communicate to web devs or user agents what will happen to the element. The former group may think it means this object has no role and thus should be treated like aria-hidden="true".
And user agents are left with the question of what accessible role to apply when exposing something which has no role.

--joanie

On 01/28/2014 08:26 PM, James Craig wrote:
> 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 Friday, 31 January 2014 21:40:46 UTC