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Results of Questionnaire ISSUE-129: replace or modify the ARIA section of the HTML5 spec - Straw Poll for Objections

The results of this questionnaire are available to anybody.

This questionnaire was open from 2011-02-09 to 2011-02-17.

6 answers have been received.

Jump to results for question:

  1. Objections to the Change Proposal to change some role mappings
  2. Objections to the Change Proposal to not allow people to use ARIA to write inaccessible documents.

1. Objections to the Change Proposal to change some role mappings

We have a Change Proposal to change some role mappings. If you have strong objections to adopting this Change Proposal, please state your objections below.

Keep in mind, you must actually state an objection, not merely cite someone else. If you feel that your objection has already been adequately addressed by someone else, then it is not necessary to repeat it.

Details

Responder Objections to the Change Proposal to change some role mappings
Ian Hickson http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2011Feb/0013.html
Steve Faulkner
Tab Atkins Jr. I strongly object to allowing nonsensical roles to be set on elements. ARIA should be used to *augment* the available semantics of HTML as necessary, not to subvert them.
Richard Schwerdtfeger
David Bolter My objection requires a common ground; that we can agree on two things:

1. web developers break the rules and show no signs of stopping.
2. we would prefer the web be useable by as many people as possible.

To cope with this reality I wouldn't jump to restrict the use of ARIA. I'm not convinced it helps anyone to fill the HTML5 spec with all kinds of restrictive details about how ARIA can be used. Shouldn't we adhere to simplicity? That simplicity would be to just allow ARIA to do it's intended job: to override the way misused (and/or semantically lacking) native markup would otherwise erroneously (and/or incompletely) be reported to accessibility technology. I'd advocate for a short clear message in the HTML5 document that says to web developers that for customizing the accessible exposure of their UI go 'here' (ARIA docs).

Some context to understand my thinking around this: I don't see ARIA as a temporary need unless web developers become technically restricted (changes to js+dom+css).

Aside: I strongly agree with advocating the correct use of native markup as a means to improve accessibility. I think we can continue to do this advocating without complicating and restricting the use of ARIA. ARIA required us to trust the web developer to use it appropriately to describe UI, otherwise we'd have already lost.
Theresa O'Connor While some of the suggested ARIA role conformance changes in this CP may be reasonable, there are several I'm concerned about:

* Allowing slider, scrollbar, or progressbar for <button>, <input type=image>, or <input type=image>
* Allowing progressbar, radio, slider, or scrollbar for <a>
* Allowing button, checkbox, option, radio, slider, spinbutton, or scrollbar on <h1>-<h6>

The stated justification for substantialy liberalizing the allowed roles is that authors can change the behavior of *any* element (via script, tabindex="", and CSS), so authors need to be allowed to fix up such markup with ARIA. But just because authors *can* do all sorts of crazy things doesn't mean they actually do them. (Authors do in fact do many crazy things. That said, custom UI widgets built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tend to suffer from "<div>itis," that is, the use of the semanticless <div> element to the exclusion of almost all other elements.)

In order to justify allowing extremely unusual element/role combinations (e.g. <h1 role=scrollbar>), some positive account of <h1> elements being used as scrollbars in the wild should be provided. Absent that, the utility to users of their conformance checker letting them know that they're doing something extremely weird is greater than the utility of repurposing such elements for such different roles.

2. Objections to the Change Proposal to not allow people to use ARIA to write inaccessible documents.

We have a Change Proposal to not allow people to use ARIA to write inaccessible documents. .

Keep in mind, you must actually state an objection, not merely cite someone else. If you feel that your objection has already been adequately addressed by someone else, then it is not necessary to repeat it.

Details

Responder Objections to the Change Proposal to not allow people to use ARIA to write inaccessible documents.
Ian Hickson
Steve Faulkner http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ARIAinHTML5-hixiecounter
Tab Atkins Jr.
Richard Schwerdtfeger I object to this change proposal: My detailed response to this change proposal and to each of the editor's objection to the "ARIA in HTML5: change some role mappings " are included here:

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ARIAinHTML5-hixiecounter#Comments_on:_Hicksons_objections:
David Bolter Similarly to my objection above. Why impose restrictions? I'm probably naive, but do specifications have to be exhaustive in this way to be effective?
Theresa O'Connor

More details on responses

  • Ian Hickson: last responded on 9, February 2011 at 20:41 (UTC)
  • Steve Faulkner: last responded on 10, February 2011 at 10:46 (UTC)
  • Tab Atkins Jr.: last responded on 10, February 2011 at 17:08 (UTC)
  • Richard Schwerdtfeger: last responded on 10, February 2011 at 18:55 (UTC)
  • David Bolter: last responded on 15, February 2011 at 16:38 (UTC)
  • Theresa O'Connor: last responded on 17, February 2011 at 19:00 (UTC)

Everybody has responded to this questionnaire.

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