WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Ajax, circa 2008 and beyond

for

From: Tech
Date: Jul 17, 2008 7:10PM

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
@thank you Shawn, Sandra, et al.<br>
<br>
I think Dojo is doing a nice job of focusing on accessibility, but I am
already knee-deep in notes about problems with it.&nbsp; I was wondering if
perhaps it might be useful to set up a forum where accessibility
experts could work directly with widget developers out in the open, and
help all developers understand the issues better. &nbsp; There are many
frameworks being actively developed, and I think they could all be
doing more, while Aria, or other standards evolve.&nbsp; This just seems
useful to me, but I could be all wet. <br>
<br>
Is there one set of widgets out there, where MOST of the user interface
passes muster?&nbsp; Is there a true AcidTest&nbsp; site for catching all the bad
ideas?<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Shawn Henry wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid: <EMAIL REMOVED> " type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Sandra Clark wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Check out WAI-ARIA which attempts to address Accessibility and RIA's
(specifically Ajax).
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Thanks for sharing this info, Sandra.
For others, more details:

WAI-ARIA is the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite from the W3C Web Accessibility initiative (WAI). The Overview page is the best starting point:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria">http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria<;/a>

The WAI-ARIA FAQ answers questions such as: "What happens in current and older browsers when WAI-ARIA is implemented?" and "As a Web content developer, what should I do with WAI-ARIA now?" See:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/aria/faq">http://www.w3.org/WAI/aria/faq<;/a>

Let me know if you have other questions about WAI-ARIA that we might want to cover when we update the FAQ...

~Shawn

-----
Shawn Lawton Henry, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
about: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/">http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/<;/a>
phone: +1-617-395-7664
e-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> "> <EMAIL REMOVED> </a>

###

</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Both WCAG 2.0 and the Section 508 refresh address ARIA in their requirements
for dynamic pages to provide properties, roles and states, which WAI-ARIA
specifies.



Firefox 2+, IE8 Beta 1 currently support ARIA as does Window-Eyes 5.5, Jaws
9 and newer versions of the Mac OS. Javascript frameworks supporting it are
AxsJax and Dojo Toolkit. JQuery will be providing it in a future buid.





Sandra Clark

============
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.shayna.com">http://www.shayna.com<;/a> <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.shayna.com/">&lt;http://www.shayna.com/&;gt;</a>

Training and Consulting in CSS and Accessibility

Team Fusebox







From: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> "> <EMAIL REMOVED> </a>
[<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ">mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> </a>] On Behalf Of Tech
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 1:51 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Ajax, circa 2008 and beyond



At Webaim.org, I can find some fairly dated articles (2005) about Ajax and
accessibility. Could someone please point me to a good list of links with
some really current discussion about Ajax adoption, standards, etc.

With so many Ajax-based applications now online, and coming, I'm
particularly curious about how government and education are adjusting to
this new world of interface widgets.
Perhaps I am just a dumb, selfish developer, but it would seem that the days
of the non-ajaxed interface are numbered. Economic realities, and the 80/20
rule will conspire to ensure that few new projects are just not going to
expend much effort in building dual interfaces for the majority of
applications. If for no other reason, than non-javascript interfaces are
hard, and painfully boring to work on. Who even wants to do that work in
most business environments, unless forced to?

Google Docs doesn't seem to be too concerned with addressing this, nor
countless other sites. So what does this mean, long term? Smarter, more
informed people than I must be discussing this realistically, and
eloquently, but I'm having trouble finding anything very comprehensive or
current (except here, of course).

Thoughts, links, welcomed.