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Re: accessible rotating image scripts?

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jan 23, 2010 10:57AM

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Al Sparber wrote:

> Of course, the screen reader makers and the standards makers have to be on
> the same page and share the same logic.

And this is *PRECISELY* the reason why ARIA is a great solution, maybe
even *THE* solution. ARIA provides meaning and semantics and structure
to screen readers in ways that are not at all possible using standard
HTML (at least until HTML 5, partially... maybe). There's no way in
HTML to say, "Hey, this is the navigation", but ARIA provides a
standard mechanism for content creators to specify the navigation and
all major screen readers to understand and utilize it. In HTML, you
can't say, "This is a carousel. Hey screen reader, treat it as such
and provide standard mechanisms for controlling it." With ARIA, you
can.

I can assure you that a fully functional, interactive carousel that
has full assistive technology support and semantics via ARIA is much
"better" (not to mention much easier to create using libraries) than a
hacked up list of static panels that have no semantic structure and
that are marked up to be hidden visually so that screen readers read
them linearly (which is entirely different than a true carousel
everyone else gets, no?).

I'm quite surprised at the animosity toward ARIA. Have you read the
spec and played around with the examples? It's not perfect, but
support for it is quite good and getting better. It provides standard
ways of providing accessibility that will never be possible with HTML
and scripting alone no matter how much you hack at it.

> If you leave it to web standards theorists and practitioners to come up with
> programmed or specification-based solutions, on their own, the result will
> always be complex.

Yet another strong argument for ARIA.

> It must be complex and it will continue to be complex
> unless the assistive technology makers join the discussion in places like
> this list.

I agree that vendors need to be MUCH more involved. However, have you
seen the level of current support for ARIA? Vendors are involved there
and implementation is quite good, and ARIA isn't even a finalized spec
yet. I still curse and wail at JAWS and others for lack of support for
very basic accessibility in some places, but this doesn't mean we
should ignore the areas where they are actually making progress - and
ARIA is definitely an area with great promise.

Jared Smith
WebAIM