W3C

– DRAFT –
ARIA Authoring Practices Task Force

04 February 2025

Attendees

Present
Adam_Page, arigilmore, CurtBellew, howard-e, Jem
Regrets
-
Chair
-
Scribe
howard-e, Daniel

Meeting minutes

[going over agenda]

Publication Status

Publication Status

We are still moving towards Feb 25 date

We have no changes but moving towards getting items ready for that

The big one being around the color settings practice

Practice Page for Supporting color settings

github: w3c/aria-practices#2991

Matt_king: The most visible change is that we've changed the title to Supporting Color Contrast Settings

Matt_King: This affected the practices page

Matt_King: 2 links are here. One to the revised Practices Page but not much to look at here

Matt_King: It's fairly placed down the page but wonder what others think on this

Matt_King: Supporting Color Contrast Settings is the 6th card based on the page structure. The description I put is the first couple sentences from the page

<Matt_King> Snippet from practices page:

<Matt_King> Some people need more than the required default minimum color contrast to perceive content. make content responsive to operating system color and contrast

<Matt_King> settings so it meets people's needs for different colors or higher contrast.

Matt_King: This is essentially our marketing text for that page

Matt_King: At some point, I wanted to use the word "high" or "higher" contrast. We eliminated that from the title so included it in the description

Matt_King: The thinking I had here is for people's perception of different colors

Matt_King: The very first sentence doesn't address it fully because some people need more than the minimum default contrast. We have to be careful not to be too wordy

Adam_Page: I also had a reaction to the first sentence that's important to perceiving the content

Adam_Page: Another rationale is about the comfort or cognitive ease of interpreting the page

Adam_Page: Thinking for example of folks with migraines who prefer dark mode

Matt_King: We could make this first sentence a little longer. Maybe we don't need the words "to perceive the content"

Matt_King: Maybe we can just say "some people need" ...

Adam_Page: I agree. Would like to just get rid of the first sentence and say something like "It meets peoples' needs or preferences"

jongund: I think we could go with just the 2nd sentence

Matt_King: I think you're right jongund. We Can eliminate the first sentence

Matt_King: I will make that change. That will cause me to do a bit of editorial at the top of the page so I will revise the introduction a little based on this discussion

Matt_King: I would like to spend a bit of time deep diving into the instructions in the first section

Jem: [sharing screen to display User Options for Adjusting Color Contrast]

Matt_King: This made me realize we might not have the word "contrast" in this section

<Jem> https://deploy-preview-380--aria-practices.netlify.app/aria/apg/practices/color-settings/

Matt_King: Should it just be "user options for adjusting colors"?

Matt_King: Or "Colors and Contrast"?

Adam_Page: I like that

Matt_King: Okay so in this table's description column, I made quite a few changes because I felt it important to tell authors what happens if "I don't do anything to support this"

Matt_King: Like in the "Invert Colors" row, if the user does this then everything happens automatically

Matt_King: They just get these alternate colors

Matt_King: In the Practices column, I shared that to ensure your site is rendered well and meet minimum color requirements of WCAG

Matt_King: This is so they know that this is what happens

Matt_King: The next 2 also note is not automatically changed by the operating system -- so the setting only works when authors provide support

Matt_King: I put that in "Increase Contrast" and "Color Scheme" rows

Matt_King: Are these statements accurate for those 2 rows?

jongund: I would say "rendering of apps"

jongund: I don't know if typically is needed. I don't know if there's any browsers that changes rendering based on that setting

Matt_King: Some browsers do

jongund: I suppose Chrome does

Matt_King: yes, when I'm saying app, I'm meaning the browser

Matt_King: Should we say "native app" there so it's clear?

howard-e: I didn't but I could see others interpreting it that way

Daniel: Can we use content ... [missed]

Matt_King: I'm thinking in some of these cases, the browser changing may cause some of these changes

Daniel: I wasn't clear that "app" was for that so maybe we should make it clear

jongund: Yep, maybe we should say the rendering app includes browser

jongund: So breaking it up so when users increase contrast, the browser rendering changes but not the browser content

Matt_King: Well the apps won't change unless the app actively supports "Increase Contrast", in iOS at least

jongund: Well I suppose if people build their own way

Matt_King: I don't know but maybe some frameworks support and some don't. The author would have to choose to build it in a way to support

Matt_King: So I don't want to say the apps are always going to do it

Matt: I didn't want to say something incorrect
… If you do nothing in dark mode or increased contrast you are not hurting users, but the browser itself may look different

jongund: Yes. Borwsers don't do anything automatically

Matt: So your browser Chrome will be in dark mode but the web that doesn't support it will render normally

jongund: Right.

Matt: Last row of the table --description of forced colors, first sentence

<Matt_King> description of color themes:

<Matt_King> Accessibility feature that automatically forces the operating system and apps to render content using an alternative color theme chosen by the user. Some

<Matt_King> of the themes are designed to provide extra high contrast, and users can customize their chosen color theme. Browser default styles respond to this setting

<Matt_King> using the system colors described below. The user-chosen theme does not automatically override author specified colors, so content can disappear in certain

<Matt_King> circumstances.

jongund: Newer Windows 11 versions have this under Accessibility > Contrast theme

Matt: I need to fix this, thank you, jongund

Matt: Firstpoint of the description is that Windows forces [...] Is that a correct statement?

jongund: Yes

Matt: Browsers respond to this setting [...] Is that correct?

jongund: Whatever style you put on your website, if it's text content, it will render with the color for text content, if it is a link it will use the link

Matt: It forces a color scheme to be used for certain kinds of contents but there's certain kinds that are excluded, right?

jongund: Everything will be forced into something else, depends on the markup
… Links will render on a different color. Buttons and other form controls have another color. Images are not changed
… Probably other media too, like videos

Matt: Browsers force the user colors on all content using the semantic markup to choose a color based on the system colors

jongund: That's too far. They have their own colors. Generally they are related to system colors, but it's not clear if it's system color or some other color.
… For example a range control tested in different contrast themes doesn't match up with any system colors foro the browser

Matt: So if you have a div role=slider it's not going to render as a slider. Does it mean that everything using ARIA is going to be rendered as a text?

jongund: Yes if the container is text-based

Matt: ARIA markup has no effect on the choice of color the browser uses
… the user chooses a color theme and then the user can change that, right?

jongund: Users can create their own themes, not sure if they can change existing ones
… Seems you can choose more things from the store but you cannot put the colors yourselves

Matt: Do they tell you which colors are used when you choose the theme?

jongund: Yes, you can edit the colors, you can set background and foreground, you can pick from eight colors

Matt: Browsers choose to apply a theme t based in the type of contento elements in content
… To some extent they use system colors in a manner that is generally consistent with the chosen system colors

jongund: You are not going to get consistent colors betwen browsers

Matt: But there are somewhat relateed with the system colors table

jongund: It's not exactly so based on my testing

Matt: I'll try to make these changes.

jongund: I might be traveling next Tuesday byt I'll try to make the meeting

Matt: If others can take a look and scrutinize the accuracy of the statements

jongund: The browsers in general use the system colors, but they tend to pick up different colors based on different type of content

Matt: How complete is this?

jongund: I think there is more work to do. I am trying to consistently use the switch control for each of the sections to highlight what happens
… Probably we will need to update the switch examples to be consistent with what is in here
… We are also using SVG to render the control part of it. The div and button arejust containers. In actual switches we don't always do that

Matt: I think we can save this for later

jongund: Current color is somewhat limiting. I would probably rely more on system colors to mimic what browsers do with standard content

Matt: Let's get at least a first versionos what we are doing it 25 Feb

jongund: Under the system colors I just put some caution notes as well

Matt: On the names pages we have a style

jongund: Let me know what is best or change it please

Expandable region

Matt: Any volunteers?

Adam: I could do somethin with this.

Adam: I'll add you to w3c/aria-practices#3215

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 242 (Fri Dec 20 18:32:17 2024 UTC).

Diagnostics

Maybe present: Adam, Daniel, jongund, Matt, Matt_king

All speakers: Adam, Adam_Page, Daniel, howard-e, Jem, jongund, Matt, Matt_king

Active on IRC: Adam_Page, arigilmore, CurtBellew, Daniel, howard-e, Jem, jongund, Matt_King