[aapi] RE: describedby pointing to display:none element (action 1104)

(adding CAAM who may not see this thread otherwise.  David, Joseph, Joanie James, and Brian, any thoughts on the use of description field for good or ill by native apps and screen-readers on your platforms?)

Hi Stefan,
Thank you for answering.  Can you help me understand why?


*         What is the use case?

*         Which screen readers make use of it with other browsers or from MSAA in IE?

*         By "we" do you mean SAP?  Are there particular features of SAP that rely on this?  What are they?  Why is aria-describedby pointing to a hidden element the best way to make these features work?


That kind of information will help me make the case.

Thank you,
Cynthia

From: Schnabel, Stefan [mailto:stefan.schnabel@sap.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 7, 2015 5:57 AM
To: Cynthia Shelly; public-pfwg@w3.org
Subject: RE: describedby pointing to display:none element (action 1104)

We definitely need a proper UIA mapping for hidden describedby texts. Anything less would be insufficient.


-          Regards , Stefan

From: Cynthia Shelly [mailto:cyns@microsoft.com]
Sent: Mittwoch, 7. Januar 2015 02:48
To: public-pfwg@w3.org<mailto:public-pfwg@w3.org>
Subject: describedby pointing to display:none element (action 1104)

https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/actions/1104

I'm looking into this action item relating to mapping aria-describedby pointing to an element that has style=display:none.  In UIA Express, IA2, and ATK/AT-SPI, the te

xt of the referenced node is copied to the accessible description property.  In AXAPI, it is copied to the AXHelp property.

UIA does not have a description property.  I'm trying to decide how to solve this problem, and getting some pushback on the idea of adding one.  Back in the MSAA days, we found that some apps were putting odd things in accDescription, and that a lot of AT didn't use it.  That was, of course, a long time ago.  I notice IA2 and ATK/AT-SPI have description properties.  Are they currently misused or full of junk?  Do AT products make use of this text?

We could also use helptext like Apple does.  James, does this work well for you?  Do you run into collisions with other types of help text?

Here's the relevant bit of the CAAM http://w3c.github.io/aria/core-aam/core-aam.html#details-id-76

Thanks,
Cynthia