W3C

– DRAFT –
ARIA Authoring Practices Task Force

06 February 2024

Attendees

Present
Arie, Bryan, Curt, howard-e, Jem, jugglinmike, Matt_King, Siri
Regrets
-
Chair
Jemma
Scribe
jugglinmike

Meeting minutes

<Jem> https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/wiki/February-6%2C-2024-Agenda

Setup and Review Agenda

Jem: Any request for change to the agenda?

[no response]

Matt_King: I removed the "site updates" topic because there is nothing relevant there (I'm a little behind)

Jem: Next meeting: February 13

Updating skipto

github: w3c/wai-aria-practices#292

Matt_King: It sounds like there's some work that has to be done for which we do not currently have a pull request

Matt_King: Specifically a change in the aria-practices repository

howard-e: I suggested to do that in the same pull request which introduces the version updates

Matt_King: So you're suggesting that we add a commit to gh-2807?

howard-e: That's right--to add the "data-skipto" attributes

Matt_King: Can you make that modification?

howard-e: Sure

howard-e: It already has a couple approvals; would you like me to re-request approval from you and Jem?

Matt_King: Yes

Matt_King: What's the order of merging, here? Can you merge 292 first, allowing us to preview 2807?

howard-e: I think 292 can be merged. If we merge the main branch into 2807, we can subsequently preview that

Matt_King: Cool. This will simplify things going forward

<Jem> data-skipto="colorTheme:aria; displayOption:popup; containerElement:div"

HTML search element guidance

Matt_King: I don't know what the appropriate timing on this is

Matt_King: This is a brand-new HTML element

Matt_King: The HTML validator hasn't been updated for the "search" element, yet

Matt_King: Is it too early to add this to the APG?

Matt_King: Do we want to give guidance now? Do we want to encourage use of the HTML "search" element or not?

Matt_King: I'm not sure what the best thing to do for the APG is, here.

<Jem> w3c/aria-practices#2652

Bryan: I haven't worked with this new element, personally

Matt_King: It looks to me like this element doesn't directly map to ARIA "search"

CurtBellew: I haven't used the element, either

Matt_King: I almost feel as though this is something to be brought to the ARIA Working Group

Matt_King: The HTML "search" element is more prescriptive than ARIA "search"

Matt_King: Does anyone want to review the pull request and share their perspective on it?

Matt_King: e.g. if it feels directionally correct, and if it updates APG correctly and comprehensively

Jem: Is lack of support in the HTML validator a deal-breaker?

Matt_King: I don't think so

<siri> Accessibility concerns The <search> element defines a search landmark. This removes the need for adding role=search to a <form> element.

<siri> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/search

Jem: It looks as though support for "search" has arrived in Safari

Matt_King: We should get at least two (but ideally three) people reviewing this and providing feedback on it

Matt_King: The guidance should be aligned with HTML and ARIA, and also that it's consistent with the guidance for the other elements that produce landmarks

Matt_King: We don't have a tight time table

CurtBellew: I'll take a look; I wanted to look at it, anyway

Siri: You can add my name, as well--I'm also curious

<Jem> https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/pull/2923/commits/5954cf62cfdce9091085321f18eb8c9e42db139d

Matt_King: Are there other places across APG that need to be changed (in addition to those that the patch is currently changing)?

Jem: Are you talking about *using* "search" in APG?

Matt_King: No, just documenting it

Matt_King: I don't think we use the "search" role in APG, though adding it in is actually in our backlog

Auto-updating of coverage and quality report

<Jem> w3c/aria-practices#2122

<siri> shirsha

github: w3c/aria-practices#2122

<Jem> https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/about/coverage-and-quality/

Matt_King: There's a preview here. If you go to the "about" page and go down to the "coverage and quality"

Matt_King: There isn't anything on this page which indicates when the report was last run

Matt_King: It seems to me like the script which does the update should also modify the content to reflect the date (we don't need the time)

Matt_King: I'm not sure where it should appear on the page, exactly

Jem: That sounds like a good idea--it's a good service to the user

Jem: But you're only talking about the "coverage and quality" report, not the entire website, right?

Matt_King: That's right

Matt_King: We don't necessarily have to do it as part of this pull request

Matt_King: But without it, there's no way to tell that it's working just from looking at the website. To me, that decreases its utility

Jem: Maybe just below the heading--"Last updated on ..."

howard-e: This script runs on every workflow push--not just commits to the "main" branch. That means it also operates on pull request branches

Matt_King: We already have a solution for "page last updated" on the pattern example pages

Matt_King: It's displayed at the bottom of the page. Is that fixed-position?

Jem: No, it is statically positioned at the very bottom

Matt_King: How is it that the example pages have that addition section at the bottom, and the other pages do not? Is it possible to pull that extra section in to this "coverage and quality" report page

howard-e: I'd like to think it's possible, of course, but I will need to review the build process to say for sure

howard-e: We probably wouldn't want to take that approach unless we wanted to include the "last modified" date for *all* pages in the "About" section

Matt_King: Okay! For some future change, we should consider including a "last modified" date on every page in the APG

howard-e: The associated CSS will ideally be declared inline within the HTML since this is a template we're editing

arigilmore: I can take a shot at this if someone can give me a little direction

<Jem> https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/blob/main/content/about/coverage-and-quality/coverage-and-quality-report.html

[the group reviews the project's file organization and identifies the two files which need to be modified]

<Jem> https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/blob/main/scripts/coverage-report.template

Sortable table bug

github: w3c/aria-practices#2904

Matt_King: There is a pull request which addresses this

Matt_King: The issue looked pretty well-documented to me

Matt_King: They're saying that if all the columns are sortable, you end up with this problem

Matt_King: They're changing our example. Our example doesn't work if you make all the columns sortable

siri: If the column is not sorted, nothing is visually provided to the users that indicates that the column is sortable (not until I hover over it or give focus to it)

Matt_King: That was a design decision because we didn't want to clutter the table with a bunch of icons. No one does that in the real world

Matt_King: The table allows you to sort by multiple criteria, but ARIA sort doesn't support this, and so neither does the visual presentation here

<Jem> https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/table/examples/sortable-table/

CurtBellew: At Oracle, we do offer sortable tables where the "sort" icon is always present

CurtBellew: And here in APG, that's also available when enabling the example's option labeled "Display sort icon in headers of sortable columns that are not sorted"

Matt_King: Ah, so Siri's preferred behavior is available with this option. Siri's feedback is about changing the default behavior

CurtBellew: Oracle's implementation looks slightly different (using an "up" arrow and a "down" arrow instead of a diamond shape), but it matches Siri's expectation

Matt_King: In any case, this is a separate issue than what's been reported

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 221 (Fri Jul 21 14:01:30 2023 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/ pdating/ Updating/

Maybe present: arigilmore, CurtBellew

All speakers: arigilmore, Bryan, CurtBellew, howard-e, Jem, Matt_King, Siri

Active on IRC: howard-e, Jem, jugglinmike, Matt_King, siri