W3C

– DRAFT –
ARIA Authoring Practices Task Force

12 November 2024

Attendees

Present
dmontalvo, howard-e, jon, jugglinmike, lola, Matt_King, Siri
Regrets
-
Chair
-
Scribe
jugglinmike

Meeting minutes

Setup and Review Agenda

https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/wiki/November-12,-2024-Agenda

Matt_King: Any requests for change to agenda?

Matt_King: Hearing none, we'll stick with the agenda as planned

Matt_King: Next meeting: November 19

Matt_King: No meeting November 26

Matt_King: We'll be back on December 3

Publication planning

Matt_King: Our target date is Thursday, December 12

Matt_King: We'll have two meetings in December to prepare for that

dmontalvo: I let Shawn know about the off-cycle publication date--there should be no issues about that

Matt_King: We have one thing complete and three things in process

Matt_King: We'll probably do our final in-meeting review of the high-contrast work on December 3

Matt_King: I hope to get my editorial changes complete by next week, and then we can assign reviewers during that meeting

jongund: I think I'm done with my work for now

Matt_King: Okay. I'll continue with my minor editorial clean-up so that we're ready to assign reviewers next week

jongund: I might update some examples like the carousel example to actually use this

Matt_King: That would be a separate pull request, though

jongund: Agreed

jongund: This opened up a lot of questions for me. Our coverage report talks about contrast--I think that should be about forced colors to be more clear

Matt_King: I think that's okay as a follow-on, as well. It doesn't have to be done at the same time

Matt_King: I think we're pretty solid on the plan for that pull request

Matt_King: There's also scrollable listbox and multi-thumb slider. Those are both on the agenda for today's meeting

Matt_King: Is there anything else folks want to see included on this milestone?

Matt_King: Hearing none, we'll stick with what we've got

PR 3139 - Scrollable listbox fix

github: w3c/aria-practices#3139

Matt_King: jongund requested a change from the author, and it looks like they made that change

Matt_King: And all the tests pass

jongund: I have reviewed their work since they made the changes, so it looks good to me, now

jongund: I was doing code review and test review

Matt_King: I think this is now just waiting on me. I'll review it, and if it's looking good, then it'll get merged!

PR 3172 - Add rail click functionality to multi-thumb slider

github: w3c/aria-practices#3172

Matt_King: This adds the functionality to the multi-thumb slider which we discussed a few weeks ago. It allows people to click on the rail to move the sliders--it moves the closest one

Matt_King: This changed JavaScript and CSS

Matt_King: It seems there's a failing check... It says the JavaScript linter is failing, jongund

Matt_King: Does anybody think we need to change any of the documentation about the example? It's a change to mouse behavior--it doesn't change keyboard. It doesn't change roles, states or properties, either.

jongund: The CSS change allows pointer events to travel through a particular element

Matt_King: So this doesn't change the visual appearance?

jongund: No. However, it occurs to me that some folks might prefer the rail itself to be a few pixels taller now that it is click-able

Matt_King: There's no change to design, so we need somebody to test the functionality, and we need someone to perform a code review

jongund: Are we supposed to be applying the "use strict" directive to all JavaScript files?

howard-e: Yes, that seems to be the case

jongund: I also updated the JavaScript to replace all the "var" declarations with "let" declarations

Matt_King: Should this be tested both with a mouse and with touch events, jongund?

jongund: I only used "click" events, but probably we should test with both

lola: I can volunteer if someone doesn't mind walking me through the changes that I'm looking for

Matt_King: The kind of testing that we want to do is documented in a link in a comment at the top of the pull request

lola: Okay, then, I can just use that

Matt_King: The specific change that jongund made is described in the linked issue. What you're looking for in this functional review is the pointer behavior is as described in the issue across multiple browsers

lola: Got it

howard-e: I can perform the code review

howard-e: jongund, you should be able to correct the formatting issues by running the command "npm run fix"

lola: My GitHub handle is lolaodelola

PR 3147 - SkipTo Scroll feature

github: w3c/aria-practices#3147

Matt_King: jongund asked for this to be back on the agenda

Matt_King: This is the pull request for the "skipTo" feature that has smooth scrolling

Matt_King: In our prior discussions, it seemed like there really wasn't a consensus around whether we even wanted to add this feature (whether it be smooth scrolling or instant scrolling)

Matt_King: I thought the decision was to leave it the way it is for now, but jongund, it sounded like maybe you were having second thoughts and thought we should choose one of the scrolling options.

jongund: The more I thought about it--since it does support "reduced motion" media query, we allow folks to opt out depending on their system configuration

jongund: I thought it was something that some people in the group thought was valuable

jongund: I like that if someone discovers it and uses it (especially on a touch device or something like that), it actually shows you where you're going to go

jongund: Part of my view of skipTo is that it's like a curb-cut. Maybe it's there because it's required by law, but people find other uses for it

jongund: Right now, I think "skipTo" is included only because it is understood as a vague requirement. I see "skipTo" as being more than just meeting an accessibility requirement. It also raises awareness of concepts like headings and landmarks to people who may not have thought about them before. That's the bigger picture for me

Matt_King: I think that making a change right now to just add this one particular feature to "skipTo", we would need a decision about which to do--instant or smooth

Matt_King: I think people liked the smooth scrolling more, but thought it was a little too fast. You said that it may have been difficult to slow down.

Matt_King: Also, there are even fewer people available on the call today

Matt_King: Years ago, jongund mentioned the option of having the "skipTo" menu always visible. That's a template change. Back when we were working on the redesign, Shawn seemed amenable to that idea, but it got de-prioritized because we had so much on our plates

Matt_King: Currently, though, "skipTo" is different on APG as it is on the rest of WAI

Matt_King: On the rest of WAI, I see there is a "skip to content" link. It just goes to "main"

jongund: That's a traditional "skipTo" link. It worked for the past 24 years; it will probably work for another 24 years

Matt_King: Do you think that the WAI team would be interested in upgrading its skipTo functionality, dmontalvo?

dmontalvo: There's an issue that Kevin opened about the skipTo keyboard interaction. It was flagged by someone that you cannot use the "tab" key throughout the interaction. That infringed WCAG

Matt_King: It supports arrow key navigation exclusively because it's a menu. You are supposed to "tab" out of a menu, so it would be incorrect to interpret that key differently

dmontalvo: That's true from an ARIA perspective, but I think the user expectation may be different

Matt_King: I'm happy to discuss. I just don't know why we would want to break keyboard conventions. We certainly want to follow our own guidance

Matt_King: The primary thing here is making the button always visible (whether it's a link or a button)

Matt_King: I think we did have a design for a non-very-obtrusive (but still visible) element for "skip to"

Matt_King: I think Isaac originally worked on it, we could probably find it

jongund: The default behavior is for it to be constantly visible; we configured it otherwise via an HTML "data-" attribute

Matt_King: So it would be a matter of how we style and position it

<dmontalvo> w3c/aria-practices#3111

<dmontalvo> This issue was closed

dmontalvo: We can re-open the issue, but we'll definitely want to have a conversation

Matt_King: This is not a burning issue, clearly--not something we have to solve on a rapid time-table. But it seems like it could potentially be a win for a lot of groups (if we were to make it more visible, that is)

Issue 3144 - Feed keyboard interaction issue

github: w3c/aria-practices#3144

Matt_King: Feed is not something that exists in desktop, so everything that we did in feed is kind of tentative in a way

Matt_King: If we had "experimental" content back in the day, we would have marked it as such

Matt_King: The keyboard suggestions in it are not based on desktop conventions because there is no such thing as a feed on a desktop

Matt_King: Judging from the most recent comments on this issue, it seems like maybe there is a problem with focus visibility in Safari

Matt_King: But now, I'm not sure based on the most recent comment

Matt_King: It's not clear to me that there is a problem, actually

Matt_King: I will come back to this

Issue 3155 - Potential combobox bug

github: w3c/aria-practices#3155

Matt_King: This is a weird bug, but it sounds like a theoretical problem with the robustness of the code

Matt_King: I would like to have someone look at this issue, look at the code, and decide if this is a valid bug that we need to respond to

jongund: I can look at the code

Matt_King: I'm not going to label it a bug, yet. I'd prefer to hear your opinion, first, jongund. I'll only assign the issue to you and label it "feedback" for now

Issue 3159 - Tooltip placement

github: w3c/aria-practices#3159

Matt_King: This is another one of those things where I need the opinion of someone else to figure out what to do with the issue

Matt_King: I don't know if I'm following the description. Why is the large cursor going to be more below than above? Also, I'm not sure if we had any instructions related to tooltip placement

Matt_King: We might need some people who aren't present today...

howard-e: I'm also not too sure about what the report is referencing.

Matt_King: Would it help if they provided a screenshot?

howard-e: Yeah, that'd be very helpful to me

Matt_King: That seems like a reasonable next step. It would be nice if it were more clear, though I'm not sure if it's even in the scope of what we want to do with tooltip... Although I suppose that's what we need to decide as a group

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 238 (Fri Oct 18 20:51:13 2024 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/you mentioned/jongund mentioned/

Maybe present: jongund

All speakers: dmontalvo, howard-e, jongund, lola, Matt_King

Active on IRC: dmontalvo, jugglinmike, lola, Matt_King