Anne,
I said at the start of this thread that the best solution is to have
widgets that are already accessible. However, we don't have a standard
for that at the moment.
We agree that accessibility experts should not be needed in order to
make content accessible. It's not only big companies that can do this.
For example, the open source widget library Dojo is adopting this.
That's something everyone can use, for free. The authors are getting the
widgets and accessibility for free, but without this technique Dojo
couldn't provide that.
Remember that this does not just apply to HTML. Roles apply to SVG as
well, and any other type of XML-based renderable markup with
accessibility gaps. I see it becoming a superset of what's needed for
full accessibility of rendering markup standards.
In any case, there is a general agreement that it's better to have
accessibility built into predefined widgets that are easy to use. If
whatwg + xbl becomes the accepted standard and we don't need roles,
great! One of of my suggestions was the we work together to make sure
that everything addressed by the roles and properties is addressed by
whatwg. For example, liveregion, which has properties for describing the
type and relative importance of various mutations within that container.
Without something like liveregion in whatwg, you can't make AJAX apps
accessible. Regions of the page that change but don't get focused will
not be understood by assistive technologies, unless there is some markup
to describe it.
- Aaron
Anne van Kesteren wrote:
On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 06:36:40 -0700, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
But XBL works with ~0 assistive technologies and is presumably going
to be complex to implement properly. Whilst, in general, I agree that
having elements used in the correct way to provide semantic
information is desirable, I think that adopting a technology that is
already implemented and proven to solve real problems is a better
approach than waiting on a complex future specification to be
finished and implemented.
So a while ago I posted
http://annevankesteren.nl/2006/06/accessibility-ideas some of my
thoughts regarding role=""... Basically, I don't really see authors
taking extra steps to make things accessible. Accessibility should
just be an integral part of the language, otherwise I don't think it
will work. For authors it will seem that without role="" their custom
widgets will work so there's no real benefit in adding it unless you
work for some big company that hires a few "accessibility experts" who
tell you to add it.
--Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>
