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From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Tue, May 29 2012 11:19AM
Subject: Fw: [NVDA] #2390: NVDA doesn't handle role=dialog with supporting ARIA attributes according to spec
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I'm forwarding this in case any of you want to chime in. This is regarding
the bug at
http://www.nvda-project.org/ticket/2390#comment:6

According to NVDA, widget control types such as role=dialog require not just
an aria-label or aria-labelledby attribute, but also an aria-describedby
attribute. I'm not able to locate where this exists in the user agent spec
however, at
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles

The problem is that this breaks the accessibility of complex widgets (see
below), and provides no recourse for preventing the announcement of
irrelevant text.

This also causes a break in Assistive Technology support by introducing
undocumented requirements that are specific only to one user agent, which
undermines the whole purpose of W3C standardization.

----- Original Message -----
Subject: Re: [NVDA] #2390: NVDA doesn't handle role=dialog with supporting
ARIA attributes according to spec


> #2390: NVDA doesn't handle role=dialog with supporting ARIA attributes
> according
> to spec
> -------------------------------+------------------------
> Reporter: bgaraventa | Owner:
> Type: defect | Status: new
> Priority: minor | Milestone:
> Component: Core | Version: 2012.2rc1
> Resolution: | Keywords: ARIA
> Operating system: Windows XP | Blocked by:
> Blocking: |
> -------------------------------+------------------------
>
> Comment (by bgaraventa):
>
> Can you help me out? I've been reading the spec, but I can't find where it
> says that user agents must parse both an aria-describedby attribute and an
> aria-label/aria-labelledby at the same time. Can you point me to where it
> says this?
>
> This is actually a really big problem. Take the following scenario for
> example.
>
> 1. There is a surrounding Div tag with role=dialog and aria-label="Choose
> Region".
> 2. Within this dialog is a listbox control with all of the countries in
> the world, which is surrounded by a Div tag with role=presentation.
> 3. When the dialog opens, focus is set on the listbox control to highlight
> the currently selected country.
>
> Now, since NVDA ignores role=presentation (which should cause NVDA to
> ignore all of this content when parsing alternative text according to the
> user agent specification), and NVDA will announce all of the content
> regardless what the label is explicitly set to, every country will be
> announced in addition to the dialog label before it gets around to
> announcing the currently selected country as expected.
>
> Also, since aria-describedby isn't documented in the user agent spec
> alongside the requirement for aria-label and aria-labelledby, this means
> that the same ARIA widgets will work differently and with varying
> accessibility across different Assistive Technologies, which would
> undermine the whole purpose of standardization.
>
> --
> Ticket URL: <http://www.nvda-project.org/ticket/2390#comment:6>;
> NVDA <http://www.nvda-project.org/>;
> A free and open-source screen reader for Windows
>