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Re: spry widgets and accessibility?

for

From: Scott González
Date: Jul 31, 2012 7:27PM

The discussion happen in various locations.

All of our API design and open issues for unreleased (new) plugins happen
on our planning wiki: http://wiki.jqueryui.com We also fully document the
accessibility concerns, such as keyboard and ARIA implementations, and
deviations from the ARIA authoring practices for each plugin. For example
see section 3 of http://wiki.jqueryui.com/w/page/12138085/Tabs. A lot of
discussion for new widgets happens here. We also have a page outlining our
AT support and providing an accessibility overview:
http://wiki.jqueryui.com/w/page/43766322/Accessibility-Overview

The team also hangs out in #jqueryui-dev on freenode, and we have weekly
meetings on Wednesday at noon ET in #jquery-meeting. A lot of discussion
for everything old and new happens here.

We have a forum specifically for development of jQuery UI at
https://forum.jquery.com/developing-jquery-ui. This is generally used by
the community to ask questions (if they don't want to ask in, or don't know
about, IRC). We also use the forum to make big announcements, such as the
API redesigns that we're currently working on.

We'll occasionally post to a mailing list, such as this one or free-aria,
if we want to get feedback on a specific implementation from the general
community. For example, here's a question about delayed keyboard activation
for tabs:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/free-aria/EMxvWZuD-Vw

Beyond those public communication mediums, we often use
Skype/Jabber/AIM/email for one-on-one communication. However, when
possible, we try to keep the communication in a public place with logging.
For example, every once in a while I'll ping David Bolter about something
on Jabber. But if there's an actual issue or I want to discuss the
implementation of something in Firefox, I'll try to keep the discussion in
#accessibility on irc.mozilla.org.

Sometimes the discussion will happen on GitHub. For example,
https://github.com/jquery/jquery-ui/pull/666 has a lengthy discussion about
ARIA and key commands for tabs.


On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Ryan E. Benson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Scott said:
> > We have active discussions and contributions with the
> > community at large.
> Scott, can you post a link to where the discussions are happening?
> Folks at work are slowly starting to get into jQuery, I'd either would
> like a gather best practices, or point them in direction when I can't
> assist.
>
> --
> Ryan E. Benson
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Scott González
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> > jQuery UI :-)
> >
> > It really depends on which widgets you need. This is my understanding of
> > the landscape right now:
> >
> > jQuery UI: Somewhat accessible, constantly improving, dedicated to full
> > ARIA support. We have active discussions and contributions with the
> > community at large. We work with Fluid, Paciello Group, Mozilla, and
> > others. Source: I am the project lead. Note: If there are widgets that we
> > don't implement, you can also check out Wijmo (http://wijmo.com) which
> > builds on top of jQuery UI.
> >
> > Dojo: Should be fully accessible, but the majority of the work was done
> by
> > "outsiders" under a grant and is not being maintained as actively now
> that
> > the responsibility is fully on the Dojo team. Source: hearsay, but from
> > reliable sources. If Becky Gibson is on this list, she can probably
> provide
> > accurate information. Perhaps David Bolter or someone else involved in
> the
> > original ARIA push for Dojo can chime in as well.
> >
> > YUI: I believe Yahoo's stance is that ARIA should not be implemented by
> > default because of the behavior changes from the traditional web. I'm
> > pretty sure they provide ARIA extensions to their widgets, but I'm not
> sure
> > what percentage of their widgets have such extensions. Source: First hand
> > experience looking at their code and reading some of their articles. I
> > would actually love to hear Victor Tsaran comment on this.
> >
> > I'm pretty sure all of the other major toolkits do not implement ARIA,
> > though they may implement some keyboard handling.
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 6:28 AM, Carin Headrick < <EMAIL REMOVED>
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Alrighty. Well that makes the question semi easier to answer. I wonder
> >> what would be a good alternative.
> >>
> >> Carin
> >> On 7/30/2012 10:38 AM, Scott González wrote:
> >> > Is Spry even active? As far as I know, there hasn't been any mention
> of
> >> > work on Spry since 2 years ago, and I don't think there was any ARIA
> >> > support in it back then. Adobe is invested in jQuery now, so I
> wouldn't
> >> be
> >> > surprised if they've actually abandoned Spry and just haven't
> announced
> >> it.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 5:38 AM, Carin Headrick <
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> >> >wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Hi. I was asked by someone whether spry widgets were accessible by
> >> >> screen reader and/or keyboard. Through playing with
> >> >> http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/widgets/widgets.html I have
> to
> >> >> say personally I had mixed results. Some of them worked like a dream,
> >> >> some of them were wonky. Some of them I couldn't tell if any change
> >> >> occurred.
> >> >>
> >> >> So how can I tell them conclusively what works and what doesn't? The
> >> >> keyboard stuff looks pretty straightforward. It's the screen reader
> part
> >> >> that has the potential to fall over. And...is it possible to some how
> >> >> integrate ARIA in there to make things better? Or do they not get
> along?
> >> >>
> >> >> Thanks,
> >> >>
> >> >> Carin
> >> >> > >> >> > >> >> > >> >>
> >> > > >> > > >> > > >> >
> >>
> >> > >> > >> > >>
> > > > > > > > > >