[Accessibility-ia2] next changes to IAccessible2

James Teh jamie at nvaccess.org
Thu Jun 16 15:34:08 PDT 2011


On 9/06/2011 9:50 PM, Alexander Surkov wrote:
> However specialized interfaces allows to provide a common
> way to deal with different objects and can be used to fix web page
> accessibility errors. In the case of media interface screen reader can
> provide unified way to play or pause the media for example. This can
> be really be a good idea when web page authors didn't provided UI to
> control the playback but added keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures.
This is a very slippery slope. By that logic, we should provide 
interfaces to fix all sorts of accessibility defects due to bad 
authoring; e.g. inaccessible drop down menus, inaccessible Flash, etc. 
Admittedly, these are poor examples, but the point stands. In any case, 
you could achieve the same result by exposing fake, off-screen UI 
controls for the video.

> I considered the idea of live regions usage, it's really good until
> the media shouldn't be stopped until screen reader finishes the
> reading. To handle this we should introduce new approach that's isn't
> connected with aria live regions.
Why? It can be generalised to a live region which requires client 
notification when read. For example, we could use @aria-live="polite" 
@aria-liveNotifyWhenDone="true", the latter meaning that the AT must 
notify the browser via some call that it has finished handling the 
region. This would still require one method, but it's better than 
implementing a whole new concept. (Note that I'm still not convinced 
this is ideal for an a11y API, but I think if we're going to do it, it 
should be as general as possible.)

> On the another hand since extended text is supposed to be
> visible by screen readers only
Maybe there are sighted users who might want to see it as well? Making 
this screen reader specific defeats inclusive design. I agree that most 
sighted users won't want it, but that doesn't mean that none will. I 
guess it could be off-screen or similar when not visually available.

Jamie

-- 
James Teh
Vice President, Developer
NV Access Inc, ABN 61773362390
Email: jamie at nvaccess.org
Web site: http://www.nvaccess.org/


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