Perhaps there should be an API to compute the full (recursive) text for any
given node, so when you want to get the text from a relation or something
else indirect without actually jumping to it, you could do that with one
call rather than exploring it recursively. In any event, performance seems
like a solvable problem.

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 8:31 PM James Teh <[email protected]> wrote:

> That doesn't solve the need to walk the tree to gather the error message,
> which is the real problem.
>
> On 7/09/2016 12:21 PM, Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:
>
> I think Dominic's suggestion on an interface tester with bit flags works
> well.
>
> Rich
>
>
>
> Rich Schwerdtfeger
>
>
>
> ----- Original message -----
> From: James Teh <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
> To: Richard Schwerdtfeger/Austin/IBM@IBMUS, [email protected],
> [email protected], [email protected]
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Agreement on concatenation of aria-describedby and
> aria-errormessage relationships
> Date: Tue, Sep 6, 2016 7:19 PM
>
>
> Fair enough. Thanks for the clear reasoning.
>
>
>
> My one remaining concern is performance, but we will clearly need to find
> an alternative technical solution to this problem. In short, not
> concatenating means that for every focus event, we need to check for the
> invalid state plus an errormessage relation and then, if one is found, walk
> the tree for the target to gather the message. The latter in particular
> could be unacceptably slow.
>
> On 7/09/2016 6:35 AM, Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:
>
>
> The ARIA working group is against concatenating the description and
> relationship strings. I will try to summarize:
>
> Specifically, concatenation by browsers could:
>
>
>    1. Defeat the purposes of aria-errormessage. The aria-errormessage
>    relationship is designed to ensure assistive technology users are as aware
>    of error messages as other users and to enable them to distinguish between
>    error messages and field descriptions. The constraints of ARIA 1.0, and
>    every other accessibility standard and API that preceded it, have forced
>    developers to blend error messages and field descriptions. This blending
>    has long inhibited both the perception and understanding of error messages,
>    which are critical to effective operation of many user interfaces.
>    2. increase cognitive load for users when errors are present.
>    Especially for screen reader users, we already have severe challenges with
>    excess verbosity that forces the user to expend energy sorting out the most
>    important aspects of screen reader feedback. Concatenating potentially very
>    disparate content in this manner would aggravate the verbosity problem.
>    3. Reduce assistive technology flexibility. Part of the power of ARIA
>    is that it gives assistive technologies the ability to present content in
>    the manner best suited for their target audiences. When browsers eliminate
>    semantically relevant distinctions, this type of flexibility is diminished.
>    If this concatenation were performed, it would essentially eliminate the
>    semantic distinctions.  If an assistive technology developer wanted to
>    present the field description separate from the error messages, the
>    developer would be forced to ignore the browser-computed description when
>    error messages are present and reconstruct the description computation
>    within the assistive technology.
>    4. Lead either browsers or authors to devise their own string-based
>    tokenization capability. Because aria-errormessage is a separate
>    relationship, there will be designers and developers who want to ensure
>    there is a method for parsing the string into its separate components. This
>    would reduce the robustness of the solution and create both inconsistencies
>    and complexity, especially when localizing implementations.
>    5. Introduce serious problems with globalization: namely there is no
>    clean way to concatenate the 2 strings in a way that will make sense. We
>    cannot put in a space as some languages don't have them (Mandarin).
>    Concatenating them together does not read properly.
>
>
> The aria-errormessage relationship is intended to address long-standing
> accessibility issues faced by both developers and end users. The energy
> required to find effective remedies to those issues will definitely pay
> dividends for assistive technology users.
>
> Would each of you weigh in. Again this is now holding up 3 working groups
> going on 3 weeks now.  Do we agree on not concatenating the two strings?
>
> Rich
>
>
>
> Rich Schwerdtfeger
>
>
> --
> James Teh
> Executive Director, NV Access Limited
> Ph +61 7 3149 3306
> www.nvaccess.org
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess
> Twitter: @NVAccess
> SIP: [email protected]
>
>
>
>
> --
> James Teh
> Executive Director, NV Access Limited
> Ph +61 7 3149 3306www.nvaccess.org
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess
> Twitter: @NVAccess
> SIP: [email protected]
>
>
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