Hi. HTML5 introduces several new types of input controls like phone number, url, search, email, dates and times fields. AFAIK most of new controls doesn't have new UI however they are intended to represent data of certain types. The question is what can we do to make the life of screen reader users easier when new input control is encountered on web page?
I think it would be cute if screen reader would announce the type of new input controls so that for instance when user navigates to email input then the users hears like "email text field". I keep in mind two approaches to make this happen. 1) datatype apporach Firefox exposed datatype object attribute if the control had associated datatype for its value. It makes sense for markups like XForms where any control can have associated data type. For example, xforms:output and xforms:input can be bound to the same instance node that used to store date. It's kind of universal approach in the means it's applicable to all controls, not only to input controls. However it doesn't encompass the case of search input what isn't data type. 2) role approach Historically, HTML input accessible has entry role, HTML in...@type="password" accessible has password role. We could spread this approach to new input types and introduce new role for every new input type. It's more cumbersome approach but it fits any new type of input control. What do you think? Thank you. Alex. _______________________________________________ Accessibility-ia2 mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility-ia2
