I'd like to give a quick update on the state of WebKit accessibility
support, and clarify a few things.
1) Our accessibility code refactoring is complete; the Mac-specific
code is now cleanly separated from a Mac-specific back end.
2) We have added a second back end for Windows MSAA. This validates
the cross-platform accessibility architecture and the relative ease of
adding a back end. (But it will still be up to GNOME/Gtk-focused
hackers or other ports targeting Linux to add a back end for AT-SPI).
3) We have recently added support for global tabIndex, a prerequisite
for ARIA: <http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/32664>. We've also landed
an initial patch for a small bit of partial ARIA support: <http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/32694
>. We realize there is a long way to go on this but I thought people
here may want to know that things are underway.
To address some specific questions:
On Apr 17, 2008, at 5:29 AM, Willie Walker wrote:
For a first pass, if WebKit were to provide AT-SPI equivalent to Gecko
1.9 a11y sans ARIA support, I think it would be OK. But, I would like
to see plans and commitment to delivering ARIA at some point soon
thereafter.
I can't really make firm commitments on behalf of Apple or the WebKit
project as a whole, but you can probably guess that we're not going to
stop working on it.
Another thing of great importance is to make sure WebKit
provided compelling keyboard support for interacting with the content.
This includes navigating the 'read only' content using normal means
(e.g., arrowing, page up/down, etc.) as well as text selection and
cut/copy/paste support.
Scrolling read-only content and focus navigation are built-in,
including the newly minted support for tabIndex.
On Apr 16, 2008, at 7:05 AM, David Bolter wrote:
Is there any accessibility support work happening for DHTML web
applications? Is Apple working on that support in-house or is there
open
source collaboration?
Please note:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7138 "Implement tabindex for
all
elements, enabling accessible web apps"
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12132 "Implement ARIA to
enable
dynamic web appliations"
Very important to get these issues resolved for the modern web :)
You will notice the first of these is RESOLVED/FIXED. Note that
WebKit's built-in accessibility recognizes both controls and script-
installed click event handlers to detect activatable elements and
expose these actions to AT, so less complex DHTML will often work ok
without any ARIA markup.
On Apr 17, 2008, at 8:36 AM, Shaun McCance wrote:
Yet. There are some JavaScript things I'd like to do.
Things like annotation popups and collapsible sections.
Nothing on the order of a web app like GMail, but still
things that need to be accessible.
You may find some of these things are accessible without the need for
ARIA, since appropriately marked up clickable controls are exposed to
AT in any case. I would advise testing.
Hope this helps.
Best Regards,
Maciej
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