aria-practices
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w3c
Relax name requirement for Radio, Dialog, Grid, etc.
To align with the imminent merge of w3c/aria#2297, we should make sure the APG doesn’t imply that a group name is required for the affected patterns (e.g., Radio Group, Dialog, Table).
cc: @pkra / @spectranaut / @scottaohara
The Providing Accessible Names and Descriptions page also specifies whether names are “Required”, “Discretionary”, “Prohibited”, etc. for each role.
The ARIA Authoring Practices (APG) Task Force just discussed Issue 3244 - Change naming guidance for radio group, grid, table, dialog.
The full IRC log of that discussion
<jugglinmike> Topic: Issue 3244 - Change naming guidance for radio group, grid, table, dialog<jugglinmike> github: https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/issues/3244
<jugglinmike> mk: I guess this issue could end up having multiple sub-issues--one for each pattern that needs to change
<jugglinmike> mk: I haven't reviewed all of these to know how many changes might be driven by this
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: They asked me to raise this in APG during last week's ARIA call
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: I haven't looked too deeply, yet--just at three pattern pages. All three imply that a name is needed, but it's kind of an editorial question
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: I don't know if it's on us to encourage any of these patterns to have these names because everyone admits that those are kind of narrow use cases
<jugglinmike> mk: Yes, we do avoid the normative language entirely and intentionally
<jugglinmike> mk: the way we handle this editorially is there is one thing we've done in the naming practice--the accessible names and descriptions practice page
<jugglinmike> mk: We have a table of guidance for every role, and we do distinguish "required" versus "recommended"
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: That's very severe language that may not be true for much longer
<jugglinmike> mk: It's okay to get ahead of that pull request and land a change before it is merged
<jugglinmike> mk: In the patterns, we do use the word "optional" sometimes.
<jugglinmike> mk: Mike Gower [sp?] has a pull request related to "tab". I was reviewing that and I decided I need to review other examples to find appropriate wording for consistency
<jugglinmike> mk: I'm trying to figure out which practice we have previously established, here. I think the right thing to do would be to describe that in this issue
<jugglinmike> mk: Sometimes, we add notes where we try to specify what's important about the naming
<jugglinmike> mk: I guess, for this, one person could take it on. I'm not going to put my name on this issue, yet, but I will help spec it out
<jugglinmike> mk: Hopefully we'll be able to find someone else to work on it
<jugglinmike> mk: I'm labeling as "required for ARIA spec"
<jugglinmike> mk: We don't know the timeline for merging that, do we?
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: Oh! It's already merged!
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: It was merged just one hour ago
<jugglinmike> mk: Ah, I guess we have to prioritize this, then
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: Scott also filed a follow-up issue with IBM's equal-access checker to encourage them to remove the associated test
<jugglinmike> mk: I'm going to label this "P1"
<jugglinmike> mk: Because this merged, it goes into the editor's draft. Actually--did we change ARIA? Is it evergreen? Will that change go to TR?
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: I don't know. I wish Daniel were here to answer that question
<jugglinmike> mk: We don't want APG to be out of sync. I kind of wish it wasn't merged until we had aligned on a timeline
<jugglinmike> mk: ARIA changes this, but it would be really nice if someone from the ARIA Working Group would do the merge, here
<jugglinmike> mk: Well, for now, I've marked this as "P1"
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: We could place a disclaimer at the top of affected pages to give warning about a breaking change in the ARIA spec
<jugglinmike> mk: I think that would be a whole new can of worms
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: Yeah...
Next step: find owner to submit PR that updates the names and descriptions practice and relevant patterns.
This could be done in steps with a separate PR for each pattern.
The ARIA Authoring Practices (APG) Task Force just discussed Issue 3244 next step - relaxing some naming requirements.
The full IRC log of that discussion
<jugglinmike> Topic: Issue 3244 next step - relaxing some naming requirements<jugglinmike> github: https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/issues/3244
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: I've been going through issues trying to understand the next steps and document them
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: There are a lot of issues which seem to be stuck
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: I want the status of these issues to be more clear
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: We previously discussed this issue. There is clear alignment that this is high-priority
<Daniel> ack me
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: We have multiple patterns plus the naming practice that needs to be updated. I don't know if it needs to be all done at once
<jugglinmike> Lola: Is this just editorial changes, then?
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: Well, it's all documentation work. It's not editorial in the sense that we're changing the meeting... But it is writing
<jugglinmike> Lola: Is there a hard deadline?
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: No
<jugglinmike> Lola: You can assign it to me
<jugglinmike> Jem: Yay!
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: I recommend that you go through them one at a time. That will make it easier for us to review. Also, doing that first one will make it much more clear for how to do the rest
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: In the "ARIA Roles, States, and Properties" section
<jugglinmike> Jem: [reads the section]
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: The change would be for the label to the group
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: There are two elements here: buttons and groups
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: The bullet on the "radiogroup" element needs to change. Honestly, I'm not sure how we want to word it
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: The current wording describes what we want most of the time
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: Somehow, we have to come up with a wording that says... "Optionally if it doesn't have a visible label, it is labelled by aria-label, unless a label isn't necessary because the label on each button is sufficient for the user to fully comprehend the purpose of the radio"
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: That is definitely too wordy, but that's the general idea
<jugglinmike> Lola: That makes sense
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: We don't want to change the existing guidance. It should be perfect almost all the time, it's just that there are rare and exceptional circumstances (where there is no visible group and the labels on the buttons are sufficient)
<jugglinmike> Lola: Adam_Page, the examples that you mentioned in the beginning of the issue--are those just examples, or are those the three affected patterns
<jugglinmike> Adam_Page: Those are just examples. I didn't do a thorough dive through all of the APG pages
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: I think if you start with radio, we can do "word smithing" there. Then, whatever format we come up with for radio, it will probably be relatively easy to extend it to all these others. It's the same general problem, after all
<jugglinmike> Jem: Why are we trying to relax the requirement?
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: The argument in the ARIA working group was that forcing people to come up with an aria-label in circumstances where such a label isn't necessary, it can make accessibility work (and it creates work that doesn't need to be done)
<jugglinmike> Jem: got it
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: It's not super common, in my experience
<jugglinmike> Matt_King: Thanks to everyone for being here and supporting the APG!
<jugglinmike> Zakim, end the meeting