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Re: Wai Aria how useful?

for

From: Tania
Date: Jul 22, 2010 9:18PM

wonder what is the readership profile and those who responded to web aim
survey ? i know of people in india, africa and south east asia [where i am
from] still using jaws v4, v5 etc.

regards
tania

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Faulkner" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2010 5:02 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Wai Aria how useful?


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
> >
> >
> >