Techniques for WCAG 2.0

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G108: Using markup features to expose the name and role, allow user-settable properties to be directly set, and provide notification of changes

Important Information about Techniques

See Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria for important information about the usage of these informative techniques and how they relate to the normative WCAG 2.0 success criteria. The Applicability section explains the scope of the technique, and the presence of techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2.0.

Applicability

Markup technologies where it is possible to expose the name and role, allow user-settable properties to be directly set, and provide notification of changes.

This technique relates to:

Description

The objective of this technique is to allow assistive technology to understand Web content so that it can convey equivalent information to the user through an alternate user interface and allow them to operate controls through the AT.

This technique involves using standard, documented and supported features to expose these properties to AT. It relies on the fact that these standard controls in standard browsers meet the requirements.

For HTML these assumptions are good. They may also be appropriate for some other technologies.

Even when the components support accessibility, it is essential that some information be provided by the author. For example, a control may have the ability to provide a name but the author still has to provide the name. The role attribute however may already be provided since it is a standard component with a fixed role.

Examples

Example 1

Example 1: A Web page written in HTML or XHTML uses standard form controls, and identifies the form control using the title attribute. The user agent makes information about these controls, including the name, available to assistive technology through the DOM and through a platform-specific Accessibility API.

Resources

Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.

Tests

Procedure

  1. Visually inspect the markup or use a tool.

  2. Check that proper markup is used such that the name and role, for each user interface component can be determined.

  3. Check that proper markup is used such that the user interface components that accept user input can all be operated from AT.

Expected Results

If this is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, failing this test procedure does not necessarily mean that the success criterion has not been satisfied in some other way, only that this technique has not been successfully implemented and can not be used to claim conformance.