896400 - ARIA role "tablist" should no longer be an implicit live region

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Disability Access APIs, defect)

Description

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

It is not mentioned in the documentation for role "tablist", however bug 663136 indicates that we assign an implicit aria-live level of"polite" to it. Since this is merely a container for one or more tab elements, the result is that screen readers babble away all tabs within a tab list, which is totally superfluous. The documentation honors this now, but we don't yet.

This was reported to me by a web developer working on making the Vadin UI toolkit accessible.

Comment 1

[steve faulkner]

In the UA implementation guide in the role mapping table [1] it states for tablist:

ROLE_SYSTEM_PAGETABLIST + 
IAccessible2: object attributes container-live:polite;live:polite;container-live-role:tablist

Note IA2 and ATK are only APIs that add live region mapping, UIA and Mac OSX do not. 


[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-implementation/#mapping_role_table

Comment 2

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Thanks Steve! I do not know when this was added. But I do know from testing the above tabs and tab panel accessibility that this mapping does not hold up to a good user experience. It simply does not make sense that a screen reader babbles away all the tabs within a tab list when focus moves to the next element when tabbing. This is what happens currently with NVDA. So I would STRONGLY lobby for a removal of this mapping in IA2, as well as ATK, since I cannot imagine Orca users appreciating this seemingly superfluous babbling any more than NVDA or other Windows screen reader users would.

Comment 3

[alexander :surkov (:asurkov)]

Steve filed ISSUE against UAIG https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/issues/594

Comment 4

[alexander :surkov (:asurkov)]

Marco, are you going to take this bug?

Comment 5

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

I totally agree with Marco in comment 2.

Related NVDA issue ticket: http://community.nvda-project.org/ticket/3374

Comment 6

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Attachment: role tablist should no longer be an implicit live region,

Comment 7

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Attachment: Tablist should no longer be an implicit polite live region,

Better patch. This one actually tests that the attributes are absent where they were present before. So we cannot accidentally reintroduce this.

Comment 8

[alexander :surkov (:asurkov)]

Comment on attachment 779696 [details] [diff] [review]
Tablist should no longer be an implicit polite live region,

Review of attachment 779696 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

::: accessible/tests/mochitest/attributes/test_obj.html
@@ +64,1 @@
>        testAttrs("timer", {"live" : "off"}, true);

pls move these under into end of sections (i.e each testAbsentAttrs after own last testAttrs

Comment 9

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/80bea130f275

Comment 10

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/80bea130f275