Re: Significant ambiguities in aria-roledescription

On 2016-07-07 10:22 AM, Schnabel, Stefan wrote:
>
> Rich,
>
>  
>
> Short comment:
>
>  
>
> >>> The accessibility tree will not change because of a role description and
> we would not want it to…
>
>  
>
> According to actual Core Accessibility Mapping
> <https://n7nij5pyss.proxynodejs.usequeue.com/aria/core-aam/core-aam.html> of
> aria-roledescription
> <https://n7nij5pyss.proxynodejs.usequeue.com/aria/aria/aria.html#aria-roledescription> , at
> least UIA LocalizedControlType will be overwritten:
>

At last week's meeting, Cynthia said that she was unsure what would
happen to the LocalizedControlType if aria-roledescription was an empty
string.  I recall her saying that UIA would likely fall back on the
default value for the LocalizedControlType based on the ControlType. 
Thus <button aria-roledescription=""> may well come out as a localized
"button" string in the localized control type.

The minutes from the meeting indicate that she was going to look into it
[1]:

"CS:  don't know about the other platforms, but in UIA, roledescription
will be exposed as the localized control type.
... I don't know what would happen if the roledescription is an empty
string.
... But I'll have to check."


The implication is that option 2 may not work as expected in UIA, where
option 2 states "... user agents SHOULD expose the value in a manner
consistent with how null values are expressed in their platform
accessibility API."  If UIA does fall back on the default localized
value for the role for a null aria-roledescription, then that value
won't mask the actual role; it will be equivalent.  That's not to say
that UIA couldn't be changed to behave differently, but that's another
work item.


[1] https://ekuhu0ggzk.proxynodejs.usequeue.com/2016/06/30-aria-minutes.html#item02

-- 
;;;;joseph.

'Die Wahrheit ist Irgendwo da Draußen. Wieder.'
                 - C. Carter -

Received on Thursday, 7 July 2016 15:18:28 UTC