[Accessibility-ia2] HTML placeholder attribute

Alexander Surkov surkov.alexander at gmail.com
Fri Oct 21 17:27:43 UTC 2016


Thank you!

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 1:26 PM, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown at alum.mit.edu>
wrote:

> Alex,
>
> I've created an issue for the core-aam to make the change [1].  I will
> bring it up at next Tue's telecon to confirm that everyone is on board,
> but based on your email, it looks like the change will be approved.
>
> Thanks.
>
> [1] https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/track/issues/1051
>
> On 2016-10-21 11:37 AM, Alexander Surkov wrote:
> > Joseph, should we request an update core-aam spec to make this change?
> > anything else?
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 8:17 PM, James Teh <jamie at nvaccess.org
> > <mailto:jamie at nvaccess.org>> wrote:
> >
> >     placeholder-text is fine with me.
> >
> >     On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 12:02 AM, Alexander Surkov
> >     <surkov.alexander at gmail.com <mailto:surkov.alexander at gmail.com>>
> >     wrote:
> >
> >         Joanie suggested [1] to use 'placeholder-text' name to keep
> >         IAccessible2 and ATK closer. Are there objections?
> >
> >         Having, placeholder for IA2 and placeholder-text for ATK could
> >         make life harder for implementators, at least it definitely
> >         will do in Firefox case.
> >
> >         [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1303429
> >         <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1303429>
> >
> >         On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 7:08 PM, James Teh <jamie at nvaccess.org
> >         <mailto:jamie at nvaccess.org>> wrote:
> >
> >             Visually, placeholder is certainly more like a value than
> >             a name/description. However, arguably, it is semantically
> >             different to a value in that it's more of a hint for the
> >             user as to what to enter there. The reason for the name
> >             mapping was partially because it's a nice fallback: having
> >             no label at all is probably an authoring error, so it's
> >             reasonable to fall back to placeholder.
> >
> >             I think I originally supported the description idea, but
> >             on further reflection, I'm not so sure this isn't going to
> >             cause problems. It just occurred to me that if an author
> >             sets title or aria-describedby, that will get mapped to
> >             description, thus killing the placeholder. So, we
> >             definitely need to expose the placeholder attribute.
> >             However, once we have that (plus AT support), we then
> >             always have to compare description with placeholder "just
> >             in case", which is pretty ugly. Name is different because
> >             while no name is probably authoring error, no description
> >             certainly isn't.
> >
> >             In short, I'd like to propose that we:
> >             1. Expose the placeholder attribute;
> >             2. Keep the current behaviour of falling back to
> >             placeholder for name as a last resort;
> >             3. When 1) happens, expose explicit-name:false;
> >             4. Don't ever fall back to placeholder for description.
> >
> >             Jamie
> >
> >
> >             On 15/09/2016 2:38 AM, Alexander Surkov wrote:
> >>             Jamie, do you have objections?
> >>
> >>             On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Brett Lewis
> >>             <BLewis at vfo-group.com <mailto:BLewis at vfo-group.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >>                 Hi,
> >>
> >>                 I have always thought of the placeholder more like a
> >>                 value for the edit field rather than a name or
> >>                 description.
> >>
> >>                 However, I think the important thing is that we have
> >>                 a mechanism that allows assistive technology to
> >>                 “know” that the place holder is present and what the
> >>                 value of the placeholder is.
> >>
> >>                 Your suggestions accomplish that.
> >>
> >>                 Brett
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                 *Brett Lewis*
> >>
> >>                 *VFO*| Software Engineer
> >>
> >>                 11800 31^st Court North, St. Petersburg, FL 33716
> >>
> >>                 *T*727-299-6270 <tel:727-299-6270>
> >>
> >>                 blewis at vfo-group.com <mailto:blewis at vfo-group.com>
> >>
> >>                 www.vfo-group.com <http://www.vfo-group.com>__
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                 *From:*Alexander Surkov
> >>                 [mailto:surkov.alexander at gmail.com
> >>                 <mailto:surkov.alexander at gmail.com>]
> >>                 *Sent:* Tuesday, September 13, 2016 1:52 PM
> >>                 *To:* Brett Lewis <BLewis at vfo-group.com
> >>                 <mailto:BLewis at vfo-group.com>>; James Teh
> >>                 <jamie at nvaccess.org <mailto:jamie at nvaccess.org>>
> >>                 *Cc:* Accessibility-ia2 at lists.linux-foundation.org
> >>                 <mailto:Accessibility-ia2 at lists.linux-foundation.org>
> >>                 *Subject:* Re: [Accessibility-ia2] HTML placeholder
> >>                 attribute
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                 Hi, Brett and all.
> >>
> >>                 There's some discrepancy in the specs between UIA and
> >>                 IAccessible2 mappings. UIA column states [1] that
> >>                 HTML placeholder is mapped to accessible name and
> >>                 description, while IAccessible2 column says HTML
> >>                 placeholder has same mapping as aria-placeholder.
> >>                 aria-placeholder is exposed it in AriaProperties [2]
> >>                 for UIA and as object attribute for IAccessible2, the
> >>                 generic name computation doesn't mention
> >>                 aria-placeholder [3].
> >>
> >>                 Leaving aside the specs, in case of IAccessible2
> >>                 Firefox does similar things to UIA. Iirc we agreed
> >>                 [4] to expose placeholder as name/description,
> >>                 because it requires zero adoption efforts from AT,
> >>                 and since nobody claimed they need semantics of
> >>                 placeholder.
> >>
> >>                 If semantics loss is crucial for you, then I think we
> >>                 could fix it by exposing HTML placeholder this way:
> >>
> >>                 * name and description as Firefox does (fix the spec
> >>                 to make it clear)
> >>
> >>                 * expose placeholder object attribute
> >>
> >>                 * do not expose explicit-name='true' object attribute
> >>                 if placeholder was used as name
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                 aria-placeholder may be left with the current
> >>                 mapping. How does it sound?
> >>
> >>
> >>                 [1] https://w3c.github.io/aria/html-aam/html-aam.html
> >>                 <https://w3c.github.io/aria/html-aam/html-aam.html>
> >>                 [2]
> >>                 http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/accname-aam/accname-
> aam.html
> >>                 <http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/accname-aam/accname-
> aam.html>
> >>                 [3]
> >>                 https://w3c.github.io/aria/accname-aam/accname-aam.html
> >>                 <https://w3c.github.io/aria/
> accname-aam/accname-aam.html>
> >>                 [4]
> >>                 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=545817
> >>                 <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=545817>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                 On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Brett Lewis
> >>                 <BLewis at vfo-group.com <mailto:BLewis at vfo-group.com>>
> >>                 wrote:
> >>
> >>                     Hi All:
> >>
> >>                     I have been looking at how the HTML placeholder
> >>                     attribute is supported by IA2.
> >>
> >>                     According to the HTML accessibility API mappings
> >>                     at: https://www.w3.org/TR/html-aam-1.0/
> >>                     <https://www.w3.org/TR/html-aam-1.0/>
> >>
> >>                     The placeholder in HTML should be handled just
> >>                     like the aria-placeholder.
> >>
> >>                     According to the core api accessibility mappings
> >>                     http://w3c.github.io/aria/core-aam/core-aam.html
> >>                     <http://w3c.github.io/aria/core-aam/core-aam.html>
> >>
> >>                     The aria-placeholder is mapped to an Ia2 object
> >>                     attribute of placeholder.
> >>
> >>                     So, it sounds like the HTML placeholder should be
> >>                     mapped to an IA2 object attribute of placeholder.
> >>
> >>                     Currently Firefox seems to support the
> >>                     placeholder as the name of the field if there is
> >>                     no other name provided by the page author (from
> >>                     https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=545817
> >>                     <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
> show_bug.cgi?id=545817>.
> >>
> >>                     This seems to contradict the description of
> >>                     aria-placeholder from
> >>
> >>                     the WAI-ARIA) 1.1 spec at
> >>                     http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/
> master/aria/aria.html#aria-placeholder
> >>                     <http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/
> master/aria/aria.html#aria-placeholder>
> >>
> >>                     Says:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                     “[ARIA 1.1] Defines a short hint (a word or short
> >>                     phrase) intended to aid the user with data entry
> >>                     when the control has no value. A hint could be a
> >>                     sample value or a brief description of the
> >>                     expected format.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                     Authors should not use aria-placeholder
> >>
> >>                     instead of a label as their purposes are
> >>                     different: The label indicates what kind of
> >>                     information is expected. The placeholder text is
> >>                     a hint about the
> >>
> >>                     expected value. See related aria-labelledby and
> >>                     aria-label.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                     Authors should present this hint to the user by
> >>                     displaying the hint text at any time the
> >>                     control's value is the empty string. This
> >>                     includes cases where
> >>
> >>                     the control first receives focus, and when users
> >>                     remove a previously-entered value.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                     NOTE
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                     As is the case with the related HTML placeholder
> >>
> >>                     attribute, use of placeholder text as a
> >>                     replacement for a displayed label can reduce the
> >>                     accessibility and usability of the control for a
> >>                     range of users
> >>
> >>                     including older users and users with cognitive,
> >>                     mobility, fine motor skill or vision impairments.
> >>                     While the hint given by the control's label is shown
> >>
> >>                     at all times, the short hint given in the
> >>                     placeholder attribute is only shown before the
> >>                     user enters a value. Furthermore, placeholder
> >>                     text may be mistaken for a pre-filled value, and
> >>                     as commonly implemented the default color of the
> >>                     placeholder text provides insufficient contrast
> >>                     and the lack of a separate visible label reduces
> >>                     the size of the hit region available for setting
> >>                     focus on the control.”
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                     I am suggesting that we all agree to present the
> >>                     HTML placeholder just like the aria-placeholder
> >>                     using the IA2 object attribute of placeholder?
> >>
> >>                     This provides the most flexibility for
> >>                     screenreaders to present the placeholder
> >>                     information anyway they see fit.  Using the
> >>                     placeholder as the name is not as flexible as the
> >>                     screenreader cannot distinguish between the
> >>                     placeholder and the label in this case.
> >>
> >>                     What does everyone think?
> >>
> >>                     Thanks,
> >>
> >>                     Brett
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                     *Brett Lewis*
> >>
> >>                     *VFO*| Software Engineer
> >>
> >>                     11800 31^st Court North, St. Petersburg, FL 33716
> >>
> >>                     *T*727-299-6270 <tel:727-299-6270>
> >>
> >>                     blewis at vfo-group.com <mailto:blewis at vfo-group.com>
> >>
> >>                     www.vfo-group.com <http://www.vfo-group.com>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>                     _______________________________________________
> >>                     Accessibility-ia2 mailing list
> >>                     Accessibility-ia2 at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> >>                     <mailto:Accessibility-ia2 at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> >
> >>                     https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/
> accessibility-ia2
> >>                     <https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/
> listinfo/accessibility-ia2>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >             --
> >             James Teh
> >             Executive Director, NV Access Limited
> >             Ph +61 7 3149 3306 <tel:%2B61%207%203149%203306>
> >             www.nvaccess.org <http://www.nvaccess.org>
> >             Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess
> >             <http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess>
> >             Twitter: @NVAccess
> >             SIP: jamie at nvaccess.org <mailto:jamie at nvaccess.org>
> >
> --
> ;;;;joseph.
>
> 'Die Wahrheit ist Irgendwo da Draußen. Wieder.'
>                  - C. Carter -
>
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