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Bug 14320 - ARIA activedescendant shouldn't require ARIA menus to be DOM focusable
Summary: ARIA activedescendant shouldn't require ARIA menus to be DOM focusable
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: ARIA
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Core AAM (show other bugs)
Version: 1.0
Hardware: PC All
: P1 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: David Bolter
QA Contact: ARIA UA Implementors
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2011-09-28 03:20 UTC by alexander surkov
Modified: 2011-12-09 20:33 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description alexander surkov 2011-09-28 03:20:27 UTC
Menus as UI control doesn't acquire DOM focus, that makes me think that ARIA menus shouldn't be different. So that if ARIA menu manages the accessible focus by aria-activedescendant then it shouldn't be required to have DOM focus.

It seems that part doesn't contradict with http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#keyboard-focus_aria-activedescendant.

However it has inconsistency with setFocus section http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#keyboard-focus_at where we are required to set DOM focus on menu that is not focusable, otherwise setFocus is considered as failing.

The usecase of this is autocomplete widgets. The focus is kept inside of autocomplete textbox when user operates with items of autocomplete menu, the active item is managed by aria-activedescendant. In order to expose widgets consistently to AT (both native widgets and ARIA widgets) the accessible focus event should be fired on active menuitem.
Comment 1 David Bolter 2011-11-10 19:23:37 UTC
Andi the latest document is the PF one right?
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-implementation/#keyboard-focus_aria-activedescendant
Comment 2 alexander surkov 2011-11-18 02:58:50 UTC
I slightly changed my mind from what I originally filed. Idea to make aria-activedescendant to manage the focus on ARIA menu without acquiring DOM focus looks reasonable but that's a syntax sugar and it doesn't seems it brings big win for widget authors. So the current proposition:

Map aria-activedescendant changes into accessible focus on ARIA widget with role subclassed from abstract select role (http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#select) if it's controlled (aria-controls) by widget having DOM focus.

That should be good solution for easiest development of ARIA autocompletes (I put some analysis of the problem at http://asurkov.blogspot.com/2011/11/aria-autocomples-implementation-insight.html).

ARIA spec allows aria-activedescendant to manage the focus if widgets are related by aria-owns (http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/states_and_properties#aria-activedescendant). The suggestion is to extend this role to aria-controls.
Comment 3 David Bolter 2011-12-09 17:16:48 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> I slightly changed my mind from what I originally filed. Idea to make
> aria-activedescendant to manage the focus on ARIA menu without acquiring DOM
> focus looks reasonable but that's a syntax sugar and it doesn't seems it brings
> big win for widget authors. So the current proposition:
> 
> Map aria-activedescendant changes into accessible focus on ARIA widget with
> role subclassed from abstract select role
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#select) if it's controlled (aria-controls)
> by widget having DOM focus.
> 
> That should be good solution for easiest development of ARIA autocompletes (I
> put some analysis of the problem at
> http://asurkov.blogspot.com/2011/11/aria-autocomples-implementation-insight.html).
> 
> ARIA spec allows aria-activedescendant to manage the focus if widgets are
> related by aria-owns
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/states_and_properties#aria-activedescendant).
> The suggestion is to extend this role to aria-controls.

I think this proposal is fine.

Andi can you make the spec change? (Just add aria-controls as another option).
Comment 4 Andi Snow-Weaver 2011-12-09 20:33:48 UTC
David, you wrote: 

> Andi can you make the spec change? (Just add aria-controls as another option).

So you want the WAI-ARIA spec changed to add aria-controls? I can't do that but I can open an action on James to do it. 

Opened ACTION-943

https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/actions/943