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Re: Use of live regions for announcing additions and deleteions

for

From: Robert Fentress
Date: May 16, 2015 1:44PM

The alert role is a type of live region, and I wasn't sure whether this was
appropriate or not. Alert suggested to my mind something vital and
unexpected, like a warning. The use cases I gave may or may not fit the
bill. I think they deserve to be assertive, so it may well be that alert
is best. It is an interesting question though: what deserves to be an
alert versus simply an unspecified live region. Do all assertive live
regions deserve to be alerts?

Best,
Rob

On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 9:08 PM, Don Mauck < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Yes, that would be better than an ARIA live, alert would indeed handle
> this well.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bryan Garaventa [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Friday, May 15, 2015 5:19 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Use of live regions for announcing additions and
> deleteions
>
> I've often encountered the same, after performing an action, nothing
> appears to happen and it's not clear if the item saved, was removed, or
> errored out in some way, and it's annoying having to hunt around for the
> confirmation message just to find out which one it is.
>
> Since this is actually quite an important confirmation message type, I'd
> recommend using role=alert for this purpose.
>
> If this isn't displayed visually, you can use an offscreen tag placed at
> the end of the Body element for this purpose, then use innerHTML to write
> the text message to it, which will then be announced.
>
> The following class works well for this across desktop and mobile.
>
> .offscreenText {
> position: absolute;
> clip: rect(1px1px1px1px); /* IE6, IE7 */
> clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);
> padding: 0;
> border: 0;
> height: 1px;
> width: 1px;
> overflow: hidden;
> }
>
> For the reason why, visit:
>
> https://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/tenydnblog/clip-hidden-content-better-accessibility-53456.html
>
> Then use a container like the following to write your message to, which
> should be appended at the end of the Body element.
>
> <div class="offscreenText" role="alert"></div>
>
> After the message is written to the container, it helps to clear the text
> after a couple of seconds so that it's not encountered during Virtual
> Buffer navigation on desktops.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Robert Fentress
> Sent: Friday, May 15, 2015 12:51 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: [WebAIM] Use of live regions for announcing additions and
> deleteions
>
> Hope you folks can help me on this one.
>
> *Scenario:*
>
> - There is a rich internet application containing a list of items
> - At the end of any item in the list is a button menu containing a
> number of options for what to do with the item, one of which is to
> delete it
> - At the top of the list is an "Add" button, which launches a dialog
> containing a form. Filling out the form and hitting the "Save" button
> adds
> an item to the list.
>
> *Question:*
>
> - Is it appropriate to alert users who are using a screen reader that
> they have successfully added or deleted an item by using a live region?
>
> *Justification:* A sighted user would immediately see that they had
> succeeded in their task, because the list would update, but a blind user
> would have to consciously scan the list to determine whether they had
> succeeded. This all assumes that focus would go to an appropriate place,
> such as to an item adjacent to the deleted item in the case of deletes, or
> back to the "Add" button in the case of adding an item.
>
> *Options:*
>
> - Whether or not the live region should be visually hidden
> - What the live region should say:
> 1. "Item successfully deleted" and "Item added" *or*
> 2. "Item successfully deleted. Focus moving to next item." and "Item
> added" *or*
> 3. It could simply be a counter indicating how many items are in the
> list, eg. "5 items". This option is nice, since it also works for
> the live
> filter search that is above the list, which automatically updates the
> number of items displayed as the user types.
> 4. Some combination of the above.
>
> Is any of this necessary or would success simply be assumed by the user,
> and intrusive notifications to that effect would be distracting?
>
> So, how about it folks? What do you think?
>
> Thanks,
> Rob
>
> --
> Robert Fentress
> Senior Accessibility Solutions Designer
> 540.231.1255
>
> Technology-enhanced Learning & Online Strategies Assistive Technologies
> 1180 Torgersen Hall
> 620 Drillfield Drive (0434)
> Blacksburg, Virginia 24061
> > > at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >
> > > > > > > > >



--
Robert Fentress
Senior Accessibility Solutions Designer
540.231.1255

Technology-enhanced Learning & Online Strategies
Assistive Technologies
1180 Torgersen Hall
620 Drillfield Drive (0434)
Blacksburg, Virginia 24061