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Re: Icon instead of text > open in new window

for

From: Jeremy Echols
Date: May 15, 2017 4:25PM

I put in a long message. Thanks for the other document, that's far more helpful. I'm rather concerned at the apparent inconsistency in the documentation, though - I wonder what other conclusions I've made based on poor docs.

I read and re-read the relevant sections of the links I posted for probably 30 minutes. I didn't want to argue against Birkir without some pretty solid information.

Turns out the information wasn't all that solid after all.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Patrick H. Lauke
Sent: Monday, May 15, 2017 2:51 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Icon instead of text > open in new window

The whole set of documents/specs around accessible name and accessible description are, to put it mildly, confusing and obtuse. Lots of overlapping, cross-referencing separate docs, with some very dense and confusing algorithm sections that aim for brevity but simply result in more questions than answers. (plus there's both editor's drafts and working drafts, mixed in with some outdated/deprecated/superseded ones).

I've already vented about this https://github.com/w3c/aria/issues/544
... feel free to add a voice of support / a +1 :)

In the case of links, I'd recommend looking at https://w3c.github.io/html-aam/#a-element (the HTML specific guidance on how things should be mapped), as this splits out the name and description calculations into separate algorithms which are much clearer to parse for a reader. And if you look at "5.12.2 a Element Accessible Description Computation" the steps are much more straightforward (and support what was said on list earlier about title and how it should map to the accessible description, regardless of accessible name):

"1, If the element has an aria-describedby attribute the accessible description is to be calculated using the algorithm defined in Accessible Name and Description: Computation and API Mappings 1.1.
2. Otherwise use the title attribute if it wasn't used as the accessible name 3. If none of the above yield a usable text string there is no accessible description"

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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