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Re: Re-order page content

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jun 3, 2017 9:37AM

Region is a landmark role in the ARIA 1.1 spec (see Jonathan's link),
and the HTML5 <section> element maps to it:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/
(browser / screen reader support for the region role is fairly robust).
In fact, I often recommend use of the region role, e.g. to mark the
boundries of dynamically displayed content e.g. in an accordion
pattern (similar to how the tabpanel role is used in the tabs
construct). The advantage that a region has over a heading is that
screen readers announce the beginning and end of the region, so screen
reader users get a full understanding of exactly hwat content got
dynamically displayed (a heading does not work as well in that
situation).
Another thing to consider is that a screen reader user can easily skip
over sections of static content to a form field (just press the tab
key), Placing instructions before a login field does not present a
challenge to a screen reader user, as long as user can navigate
directly to the beginning of those instructions, either using
navigation heading, skip link, or an ARIA landmark (in this case a
region landmark is probably not the most appropriate, you can use the
form role, or if you already have a heading, just stick with it and
keep it simple).
I know developers cringe if you ask them to add two extra links to
content for assistive technology reasons, so there has to be an urgent
accessibility reason to do so, I think in your case you can get by,
and save that favor for a rainy day.



On 6/2/17, Jonathan Avila < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> The use of role="region" is non-valid and non-conformant, although in
>> practical terms it is benign - today.
>
> John, can you please provide a citation for role of region being non-valid
> and non-conformant?
>
> https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#region
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan Avila
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> SSB BART Group (soon to be Level Access)
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> 703.637.8957 (Office)
>
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>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf
> Of John Foliot
> Sent: Friday, June 02, 2017 6:07 PM
> To: Sandy Feldman
> Cc: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Re-order page content
>
> The use of role="region" is non-valid and non-conformant, although in
> practical terms it is benign - today.
>
> If you can remove it, do so, but don't stay late on a Friday evening to do
> it - make it a regular maintenance task if you can.
>
> At least, that would be *my* strategy...
>
> JF
>
> On Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 4:59 PM, Sandy Feldman < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>
>> I've been using role="region". I just double-checked and realized it's
>> in the works and not one of the accepted terms. Should I cut that out?
>> Or carry on on the theory it doesn't do any harm?
>>
>> https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Using_the_region_role_to_
>> identify_a_region_of_the_page
>> Sandy
>>
>>
>> On 2017-06-02 4:38 PM, John Foliot wrote:
>>
>> Hi Sandy,
>>
>> If you are talking about ARIA landmark regions
>> (https://www.w3.org/TR/wai- aria/roles#landmark_roles), there is only
>> a fixed taxonomy of region
>> terms:
>>
>> - application
>> - banner
>> - complementary
>> - contentinfo
>> - form
>> - main
>> - navigation
>> - search
>>
>> While it would be perhaps interesting to allow for an expansion of
>> those landmarks (or the ability to create custom ones), we really
>> can't do that today.
>>
>> > Would headings with those names be better?
>>
>> Yes,
>> absolutely.
>>
>>
>> However dealing with the "which should come first"
>> question remains: First-time users should (MUST?) get the
>> instructions first, but by your 58th log-in I suspect getting those
>> instructions would be, at a minimum, useless, and at a maximum
>> outright frustrating (with I suspect a majority being "annoyed"). Not
>> that non-sighted users couldn't "deal" with always getting
>> instructions first (it *is* trivial to jump ahead, and as you note the
>> good use of Headings would certainly facilitate page navigation and
>> orientation).
>>
>> JF
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 1:08 PM, Sandy Feldman < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Would creating ARIA regions be useful here? Would it be easier to
>>> skip the instructions and login if instructions were in a region
>>> labelled "login instructions" and the login was in a region labelled
>>> "login"? Would headings with those names be better?
>>>
>>> Sandy
>>> On 2017-06-02 9:41 AM, John Foliot wrote:
>>>
>>> Specific to Joseph's question:
>>>
>>> Not seeing the actual design in question, I still will suggest that
>>> for maximum usability (including sighted keyboard-only users) putting
>>> the repeat action (Log-In) ahead of the (presumably) one-time, or
>>> limited-time use of "Instructions" actually makes sense over the
>>> aggregate: non-sighted users won't need to hear the instructions
>>> **every** time they arrive at that page, only the first time (or
>>> perhaps the first few times - but the log-in process will be, and become,
>>> a rote activity over time).
>>>
>>> (Think of this in terms similar to "skip-nav"... skipping over
>>> repeated or non-needed content to get to the "meat" of the page in
>>> question - here, to log-in.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> John Foliot
>> Principal Accessibility Strategist
>> Deque Systems Inc.
>> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>>
>> Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> John Foliot
> Principal Accessibility Strategist
> Deque Systems Inc.
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>
> Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion
> > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > > >


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