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Re: Wai Aria how useful?

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Jul 26, 2010 4:03PM

also worth mentioning yahoo!'s YUI work there

--
Patrick H. Lauke


On 26 Jul 2010, at 21:39, "Hoffman, Allen" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Just curious:
> Dojo and Jquery are the two always named sets of building blocks which include ARIA.
> Of the set of similar building blocks, is this 2% 50% or what?
> This proliferation of such building block sets which may or may not include easy use of accessibility features seems to be a real challenge to me.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Birkir Rúnar Gunnarsson [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 6:43 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Wai Aria how useful?
>
> Steve
>
> Thanks very much for all the info.
> Like I said I am fairly new to all of this and it appears I
> misunderstood a few things, but I am all too happy to be corrected and
> will start with the pointers in your post for further research.
> The screen reader ownership survey surprises me though, it may be
> location specific, because I know the situation in a few countries in
> Europe and the user SR ownership seems to differ from this survey, so
> it is a good thing.
> I will post back with questions/comments after I update my knowledge
> some. *grin*
> Cheers
> -B
>
> On 7/22/10, Steven Faulkner < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> hi birkir,
>>
>> you wrote:
>> "You definitely cannot expect your users to be so up-to-date given the price
>> of upgrades..."
>>
>> The webaim screen readers survey differs from your conclusion
>>
>> "The vast majority of respondents updated their primary screen reader within
>> the previous year."
>> http://www.webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey2/#demographics
>>
>>
>> you wrote:
>> "Another issue is clashes between screen reader key strokes while
>> navigating a web page and assigned Aria keyboard shortcuts. "
>>
>> There are no "ARIA keyboard shortcuts" as such:
>> The set of keyboard shortcuts defined for use in Google Reader has NOTHING
>> to do with ARIA.
>>
>> What ARIA promotes is the implementation of keyboard interactions for
>> widgets that are the same or similar to those of controls in desktop
>> software applications
>>
>> "The model for keyboard support for Web 2.0 widgets are graphical user
>>> interface (GUI) operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X; and
>>> other desktop operating systems like GNOME and GTK. "
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#kbd_generalnav
>>
>> There is an ongoing effort to specify keyboard keystrokes to be used for web
>> based controls:
>> http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide
>>
>> These keyboard interaction best practices are being implemented in
>> javascript UI libraries such as DOJO and JQUERY so that users can rely upon
>> the same or similar keystrokes being usable on for example a 'button'
>> regardless of whether its a native HTML button <button> or a button built
>> from divs and spans with added script to provide the user interaction.
>>
>>> Another issue is clashes between screen reader key strokes while
>>> navigating a web page and assigned Aria keyboard shortcuts. The
>>> application element is supposed to turn off screen reader key
>>> functionality but this does not always seem to work properly
>>
>> There is no clash per se, when in document reading mode, most key strokes
>> are consumed by the AT, this is why most windows based AT have a special
>> mode for interacting with native controls on web pages, which allows
>> keystrokes to be passed to the browser rather than consumed by the AT. ARIA
>> extends this method to the custom controls built using a combination of
>> HTML/scripting and CSS.
>>
>> The use of role="application" on an element indicates to AT that support it
>> they should switch from document to application mode (so users can interact
>> with controls using the keyboard). It is true that it sometimes does not
>> work, but i would suggest it is no more or less buggy than many of the other
>> features in popular commercial screen readers.
>>
>> you wrote:
>> "/basically, yopu have to expect not all users can use Aria and even
>> for those who can, a lot of thought needs to go in to the key mapping
>> and you must ensure that the user can access a simple keyboard help
>> overview in a convenient format somehow (perhaps have it downloadable
>> as a .txt file or plain html page that opens in a new window or tab)."
>>
>> again what you are talking about has nothing to do with ARIA, in fact it is
>> the opposite:
>> The use of ARIA on custom controls provides users with information about the
>> role/state and properties of the control which typically results in the AT
>> providing hints about how to interact with the control.
>>
>> Tests and examples of what AT report when ARIA roles are encountered:
>> http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/aria-tests/user-input-widgets.html
>> note these results are from 18 months ago.
>>
>> Regards
>> Stevef
>>
>>
>>
>> 2010/7/22 Birkir Rúnar Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>>
>>> There are a few inherent problems with Aria.
>>> To use it I believe that you need Firefox 3.5 or newer, IE8. As for
>>> screen readers I think it is Jaws 10 and above, Window Eyes 7 and
>>
>> above and Hal/Dolphin 11.2 and above (NVDA does a good job of
>>> recognizing Aria).
>>> You definitely cannot expect your users to be so up-to-date given the
>>> price of upgrades and relatively lousy set of improvements at least in
>>> Jaws lately (no bashing intended, Ijust feel that upgrades from Jaws 9
>>> have hardly been worth it).
>>> Another issue is clashes between screen reader key strokes while
>>> navigating a web page and assigned Aria keyboard shortcuts. The
>>> application element is supposed to turn off screen reader key
>>> functionality but this does not always seem to work properly (I will
>>> admit I lack expertees in this area, I am looking at it but this was
>>> discussed at length at the ICCHP conference I just attended).
>>> Thus a screen reader user must pass every keysroke to an Aria page
>>> through the screen reader by using the designed pass through key, and
>>> that is a relatively advanced operation (or rather, having the user
>>> recognize the need to do this is fairly advanced, one has to
>>> understand what type of page is being encounterred and what that means
>>> for navigation).
>>> Even if both of these issues are resoled and you have a user with
>>> compatible SR and browser and the switching off works, there is still
>>> a worrying lack of standards regarding keyboard mapping of aria
>>> elements, which means the user has to continually return to some type
>>> of on page help to see what keystrokes are required for what action
>>> (See GoogleReader as an example).
>>> These help messages do not (perhaps cannot) appear in a virtual
>>> buffer, meaning it is hard to copy them and recall them in a text
>>> document, so you have to kepp clicking on some type of help / overview
>>> on the page that tells you the functionality of each key stroke.
>>> There is a brilliant video demo about this, I will post it if I manage
>>> to dig it up from my conference lecture notes, which I will have time
>>> for over the weekend.
>>> /basically, yopu have to expect not all users can use Aria and even
>>> for those who can, a lot of thought needs to go in to the key mapping
>>> and you must ensure that the user can access a simple keyboard help
>>> overview in a convenient format somehow (perhaps have it downloadable
>>> as a .txt file or plain html page that opens in a new window or tab).
>>> Hope some of these thoughts help, plesae keep us updated and I will
>>> post back once I have sorted out my notes.
>>> Cheers
>>> -B
>>>
>>> On 7/22/10, Seth Kane < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>>> I have had little to no luck with ARIA unless you have the latest and
>>> great
>>>> version of both browsers and screen readers. It isn't ready for the
>>> lowest
>>>> common denominator just yet. Maybe HTML5 will be better.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Seth Kane
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>>>> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of
>>>> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 2:13 PM
>>>> To: WebAIM Discussion List
>>>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Wai Aria how useful?
>>>>
>>>> Nancy Johnson wrote:
>>>>> How useful is WAI Aria to the average screen reader user who may not be
>>>>> technically inclined?
>>>>
>>>> It depends on what version of a screenreader and browser they
>>>> have. With JAWS 11 + Firefox 3, for example, live regions get
>>>> announced in ways that some people find helpful (depending on how
>>>> well they have encoded).
>>>>
>>>>> Does this also help the mobility impaired user who is not visually
>>>>> impaired?
>>>>
>>>> I have found that there are circumstances in which ARIA
>>>> navigation changes the way the wonderful Firefox add-on
>>>> Mouseless Browsing interacts with a webpage in a way that gives
>>>> me more control over Ajax drop-down menus. I haven't narrowed it
>>>> down to exactly what features make things better, but I've been
>>>> meaning to.
>>>>
>>>> -deborah
>>>>