W3C

– DRAFT –
ARIA Deep Dive - prohibited naming resolution

29 April 2021

Attendees

Present
carmacleod, jamesn, Jemma, Joanmarie_Diggs, msumner
Regrets
-
Chair
JamesNurthen
Scribe
jamesn

Meeting minutes

https://github.com/w3c/aria/discussions/1449

https://github.com/w3c/aria/discussions/1449#discussioncomment-670281

1. We change the definition of "prohibited" under Accessible Name Calculation:

Change - "the element has no name" to "the element does not support name from author"

joanie: How many folks are as immersed in this as aaron, scott and me?

<Jemma> +1 for change

joanie: in ARIA 1.2 we made a few changes that we need implemented

joanie: 1 change is that there is a list of roles where accessible name is prohibited... texty roles

"prohibited: the element has no name. Authors MUST NOT use the aria-label or aria-labelledby attributes to name the element."

joanie: changed the code, nuked the name, broke the universe

joanie: seemed to boil down to interactive generics

joanie: div with tabindex and div with contenteditable

joanie: oh great - maybe we don't have to test - as an authoring thing and the validators can do that

joanie: jamesn pointed out that other stuff in 1.2

jamesn: I do not see "User Agents MUST NOT expose an ARIA attribute to the platform accessibilty API when the element's computed role prohibits use of the attribute."

aaron: I ran into a name generic one - where it wasn't the authors stated role

aaron: for role presentation and role region, if there is no name then it not a region.

scott: was talking about aria-roledescription

aaron: we never really covered the computed role

jamesn: the 1.3 text does cover that

<joanie> https://github.com/w3c/aria/pull/1408/files

Action: file a 1.3 issue for what to do with global properties that are prohibited on role none/presentation

jamesn: why did we introduce name prohibited

joanie: lets get resolution on the 1.2 issues

joanie: I don't have to test that because there is no prohibition

joanie: we should tripple check... 1.2 CR we have name prohibited and a list of roles....

joanie: Author MUST not

joanie: Also says "the element has no name"

what does that mean?

there are a bunch of tests that are failing

in terms of end users.... I don't think that a <p> with aria-label should have an accessible name

paragraphs that are non interactive - are they even nameable

scott: once focusable comes into the mix then nothing was getting exposed

melanie: I tell folks they are wrong if they do that

bryan: yes

joanie: if you are a good author... user agents try to make things suck a little bit less for end users

joanie: user agents are going to caluculate name from content

joanie: if a screen reader user tabs to it then have a nameless thing

joanie: try to correct

melanie: would it be possible to throw an error

scott: have issues with how permissive html is

jamesn: have browsers ever considered standards compliant mode?

aaron: -1 2 different modes increase complexity

scott: The element has no name... we were primarily concerned about stopping authors from doing this

<joanie> https://github.com/w3c/aria/pull/985

jamesn: the accname change is the one that changes the naming calculation.

carmacleod: Joanie proposed change is clearer

scott: can we make that change without having to reenter CR

jamesn: Michael?

MichaelC: I don't see any reason not to

<joanie> https://github.com/w3c/aria/pull/985/commits/c1a460307a845edc0759b41f1cd7bc7416bcc3ff

MichaelC: No need to re-enter CR

<Jemma> +1 this is editorial

scott: does this unblock you?

<carmacleod> +1 for changing "the element has no name" to "the element does not support name from author"

joanie: Authors MUST NOT statement is not in 1.2 CR - was added later, so I don't have to test that

<Jemma> + 1000

joanie: going to remove "the element has no name"

jamesn: nothing in the spec that prevents error correction

scott: didn't want to make it explicit at first

scott: can disuade authors from this antipattern

joanie: a reasonable implementation for non interactive, non contenteditable we don't aboide by aria-label but if interactive then user agent corrects

Summary of action items

  1. file a 1.3 issue for what to do with global properties that are prohibited on role none/presentation
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 131 (Sat Apr 24 15:23:43 2021 UTC).

Diagnostics

No scribenick or scribe found. Guessed: jamesn

Maybe present: aaron, bryan, joanie, melanie, MichaelC, scott