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Thread: If you use the WAI-ARIA role “application”, please do so wisely!

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Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)

From: Kevin Chao
Date: Mon, Feb 06 2012 12:48PM
Subject: If you use the WAI-ARIA role “application”, please do so wisely!
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Marco Zehe, Hamburg, Germany, Mozilla a11y QA.
wrote up this great, informative, and practical: New blog post: If you
use the WAI-ARIA role "application", do so wisely!
http://www.marcozehe.de/2012/02/06/if-you-use-the-wai-aria-role-application-please-do-so-wisely/
#a11y #aria #axs

Kevin

From: Ryan Hemphill
Date: Mon, Feb 06 2012 2:06PM
Subject: Re: If you use the WAI-ARIA role “application”, please do so wisely!
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This is a tricky one, I agree.

There is more to this, however. One of the problems that you can run into
when using rich internet applications is a 'loss of synch' between the
browser and screen reader (usually JAWS) and application mode avoids these
kinds of hiccups. One of the places I see this being a real problem is
when rich internet applications leverahe AJAX or xml-xslt transforms which
can sometimes build in such a way that the screen reader gets the wrong
information. From what I have been able to gather, much of this comes from
the fact that the content is being passed to the screen reader before it is
displayed. While some people may think this isn't the case, I have seen
some pretty extreme examples of where content is being read off before it
ever gets displayed on the screen at all - sometimes 15 seconds.

Anyway, I would say that the more sophisticated your application, the more
likely that you are going to need to use - and understand - application
mode.

- Ryan

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Kevin Chao < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Marco Zehe, Hamburg, Germany, Mozilla a11y QA.
> wrote up this great, informative, and practical: New blog post: If you
> use the WAI-ARIA role "application", do so wisely!
>
> http://www.marcozehe.de/2012/02/06/if-you-use-the-wai-aria-role-application-please-do-so-wisely/
> #a11y #aria #axs
>
> Kevin
>

From: James Nurthen
Date: Mon, Feb 06 2012 3:27PM
Subject: Re: If you use the WAI-ARIA role “application”, please do so wisely!
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What we really need then - instead of application mode is a method where
the web application can signal to the screen reader that it has finished
modifying the page - so the screen reader can refresh whatever buffers they
may have.

I thought setting aria-busy to true while making changes, and then
resetting it to false once done was the right way to do this although I
have never run any tests to see if this actually works in commonly
available AT.

Has anyone tested this - or can any screen reader developers chime in as to
how we should be signaling as a web developer that we have finished
modifying the page?


Regards,
James

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 13:06, Ryan Hemphill < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >wrote:

> This is a tricky one, I agree.
>
> There is more to this, however. One of the problems that you can run into
> when using rich internet applications is a 'loss of synch' between the
> browser and screen reader (usually JAWS) and application mode avoids these
> kinds of hiccups. One of the places I see this being a real problem is
> when rich internet applications leverahe AJAX or xml-xslt transforms which
> can sometimes build in such a way that the screen reader gets the wrong
> information. From what I have been able to gather, much of this comes from
> the fact that the content is being passed to the screen reader before it is
> displayed. While some people may think this isn't the case, I have seen
> some pretty extreme examples of where content is being read off before it
> ever gets displayed on the screen at all - sometimes 15 seconds.
>
> Anyway, I would say that the more sophisticated your application, the more
> likely that you are going to need to use - and understand - application
> mode.
>
> - Ryan
>
> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Kevin Chao < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> > Marco Zehe, Hamburg, Germany, Mozilla a11y QA.
> > wrote up this great, informative, and practical: New blog post: If you
> > use the WAI-ARIA role "application", do so wisely!
> >
> >
> http://www.marcozehe.de/2012/02/06/if-you-use-the-wai-aria-role-application-please-do-so-wisely/
> > #a11y #aria #axs
> >
> > Kevin
> >

From: Heidi Jungel
Date: Tue, Feb 07 2012 12:12PM
Subject: Re: If you use the WAI-ARIA role ³application², please do so wisely!
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This is a tricky issue. But I have argue this with landmark roles in
general.
I recently visited a page that had 60 landmarks.

For me, the landmark role allows me to jump to major sections of a page.
Almost like a fancy skip to navigation.
I can then use JAWS or VoiceOver to jump around within this major sections.

As the author of that article mentioned, some sections in which you should
not use application landmark role.

However, it goes back to general layout of the page. These "pieces" should
capture the main layout of your page;
which would likely be defined at the wireframe level. Application
landmark is definitely a cumbersome spot. However, in working with
developers, I indicate that if there are more than two, we have a problem.
It can then get into a usability issue as well as an accessibility
problem.

Therefore, there are some sections, although useful, may not necessarily
need an entire landmark role.
If so, at least label these landmarks.

Just my two cents.