W3C

– DRAFT –
ARIA Authoring Practices Task Force

18 March 2025

Attendees

Present
Adam_Page, ari, arigilmore, CurtBellew, Daniel, howard-e, jem, jugglinmike, lola, Matt_King
Regrets
-
Chair
-
Scribe
jugglinmike

Meeting minutes

Setup and Review Agenda

https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/wiki/March-18%2C-2025-Agenda

<Jem> https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/wiki/March-18%2C-2025-Agenda

Matt_King: We might re-arrange the agenda depending on whether Jon joins us today

Matt_King: Any requests for change to agenda?

Adam_Page: If we have a few minutes to spare, I can give a quick update to issue 3215 (the expandable region)

Matt_King: Sounds good--that's already on the agenda under "publication planning"

Jem: We'd love to hear about CSUN, Matt_King!

Matt_King: Sure, we can tack that on to the end of the agenda

Matt_King: Next meeting: March 25

Matt_King: The following week, I am in some all-day meetings for work in London. I'll be in the wrong time zone and I won't be able to attend

Matt_King: I cancelled the meeting for April 1

Matt_King: So the following meeting will be April 8

Publication planning

Matt_King: Last time, before we changed the publication target to March 25

Matt_King: Right now, there are three things in the milestone. Two of them are merged, and they're very small changes (strictly editorial stuff)

Matt_King: The other thing in the milestone is PR 2991 which is on the agenda for today. It seems unlikely that we will wrap that up in time for the next publication

Matt_King: Should we just push out these two little changes?

Matt_King: Or should we push it out to some time in April? (There's no harm in letting these little changes sit there)

Matt_King: I don't have an opinion either way

Daniel: These days, we're more flexible in terms of publication. As soon as something is ready, you can submit a pull request, and I can publish (perhaps within the same day)

Matt_King: That sounds good! I like to set goals and have dates that we're working towards as much as we can. But if the overhead of doing a publication is straightforward, then delivering two which are done--that's good

Matt_King: So let's stick to the plan. Or I suppose, we could publish even sooner than planned for the two things in this milestone

howard-e: I can make a publication branch for those two things today

Daniel: And I could have it published by Thursday

Consider adding an expandable "region"

github: w3c/aria-practices#3215

Adam_Page: I finished an initial prototype

Adam_Page: I used Scott O'Hara's prototype as a starting point

Adam_Page: I built on it, using hypothetical real-world content instead of lorem ipsum

Adam_Page: I reviewed the minutes of the ARIA Working Group and found an example from Aaron Leventhal (sp?)

Adam_Page: I built on that concept

Adam_Page: I wanted to cover nested focusables, as well

Adam_Page: In Scott's example, everything that is expanded is static content. I wanted to support if there was more content in there

Adam_Page: Also, when you click expand, I put programmatic focus on the "expand" button

Adam_Page: And I added cursor support for selecting text within the interactive area

Adam_Page: I haven't committed anything to the repository, yet, but I do have a CodePen link that I can share

Adam_Page: I wanted to check in with you folks about the timeline

Adam_Page: Like Matt_King, I am also headed overseas next week. I don't know if that factors into the timing, but at the very least, I can have this up for review before I go

Matt_King: Sure. If you want to make a "draft" pull request, that will give us something to look at

Matt_King: There's also the table for roles, states, and interactions. Could you add that?

Adam_Page: I can do a draft pull request for the pattern itself, but I've been intentionally holding off on pattern documentation because I expect there to be some churn while we play with the example and discuss how it ought to behave

Matt_King: Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe you can just include an empty table in your "draft" pull request

Adam_Page: Sure

Matt_King: As I think about how we test these things in the ARIA-AT project, sometimes it's a really good idea to have a super-basic example that has as few interactions as possible but still covers the most basic stuff required for interoperability. And then, separately, something fancier

Matt_King: Specifically, I'm thinking about the nested focusables. I'm wondering if we want one example with those and one without because they may have different levels of support...

Adam_Page: That seems plausible. The nested focusables certainly felt like the most complicated aspect, initially

Adam_Page: But where I landed, it doesn't seem like the removal of those nested focusables will lead to a change that needs to be documented

Matt_King: Well, lets start with what you have then, and we can have a discussion about simplification as part of our review

Adam_Page: It took a little extra finesse to ensure that when a user uses a keydown, it doesn't interfere with text selection

Adam_Page: That the user should be allowed to click and drag with a pointing device without triggering the "collapse" behavior

Adam_Page: If it's collapsed, they should be able to select text (and copy it to their clipboard), and the same goes for the "expanded" state

Matt_King: I don't know if that would show up in the accessibility features or not, but commenting about it in your code would be helpful

Matt_King: You might want to mention it in the accessibility features, though. I don't know

Adam_Page: Yeah, I don't know if that ties back to anything normative. It could just be a case where we took special care

Matt_King: Selection is important for things like "select to speak"

Adam_Page: You mean, like, voice control?

Matt_King: Mac and Windows both have a feature where you can select text to have it spoken

Matt_King: So if you can't select text, you can't have it spoken. That's one way selection ties directly to accessibility

Adam_Page: Got it

<Adam_Page> https://cdpn.io/pen/debug/PwYMopM

Matt_King: So let's create a "draft" pull request with a skeleton table. That will generate a preview, and we can play around with it

Matt_King: Then we can discuss timeline when you return

Adam_Page: I shared a link to the example as hosted by Codepen

PR 2991 - Next steps on color settings practice

Matt_King: In Jon's absence, we'll skip this topic for now

github: w3c/aria-practices#2991

PR 3249 - Add HTML search to landmark practice

github: w3c/aria-practices#3249

Matt_King: I created a new pull request and merged an old pull request into that branch

Matt_King: that's where this pull request originated

Matt_King: The changes are for the "practices" page for landmarks

Matt_King: We have information about landmarks in two places onAPG

Matt_King: In the "featured practices" section and in the "landmarks" pattern

Matt_King: The "landmarks" pattern is pretty straightforward. It lists all the landmarks that we have (which need to be rewritten because they don't follow the APG template--they are the one aberration we have left... but that's a separate piece of work)

Matt_King: My question is: do we want to make a change to the practice without updating the corresponding "search" example page?

Matt_King: In the first comment on this pull request, I added a link to the preview that goes to the right place

Matt_King: The first change is under the heading "HTML Sectioning Elements"

Matt_King: The very last row of that table is new. It's saying that there is now an html "search" element and it corresponds to the role

Matt_King: The other change is under the section simply titled "Search" (a level-three heading)

Matt_King: Under that, there is a change under "HTML technique". There is also an "ARIA technique"

Matt_King: That's essentially all that this PR changes--those two places

Matt_King: A little further down, you'll find a link to two examples. It says "search landmark examples." If you follow that link, the page has a tab called "HTML techniques". It says that there is no "search" element. This pull request did not change that.

Matt_King: Should we push this pull request without updating that part?

Matt_King: Because this landmark example page needs to be rewritten (like all landmark example pages)

Matt_King: But if we pushed this pull request as-is, people would get conflicting information

Matt_King: So I'm reluctant to do that

Jem: I would support to push changes for search and then include a note on this example page that references your new text

Matt_King: I don't know about a note... I think we would just want to change the content of what's under the "HTML Techniques" tab

Matt_King: It's just a content update to this page. I didn't have time to make that change to that page

Matt_King: We do have the option to push this pull request out without changing it, but then the APG would have conflicted information

Matt_King: Ideally, we want an HTML version of the example under the "ARIA Techniques" tab

Matt_King: It's pretty straightforward. I'm recommending that it be done before we push this out

Matt_King: But that means someone needs to add a commit to pull request 3249 which does that

CurtBellew: This may be something that I actually have time to do

CurtBellew: It would look almost exactly the same as the ARIA Technique

Matt_King: Right, I think all you have to do is change the "div" to the "search" element and take away the "role=search". Oh, and also modify the text that's above it

CurtBellew: Got it

Matt_King: That would be really helpful!

Jem: I assigned the pull request to CurtBellew

<Daniel> Issue on respec links

Daniel: Unrelatedly, there are ReSpec links in the first part of this example, and those no longer work. We should probably audit all the examples for this and fix it throughout with a separate patch

Matt_King: I didn't recognize that as being ReSpec. It looks like Wiki markup. I will fix that in this pull request

Daniel: I'll take a pass on the rest of the pages and see if it shows up elsewhere

Matt_King: Thank you for that observation, Daniel!

Issue 3244 next step - relaxing some naming requirements

github: w3c/aria-practices#3244

Matt_King: I've been going through issues trying to understand the next steps and document them

Matt_King: There are a lot of issues which seem to be stuck

Matt_King: I want the status of these issues to be more clear

Matt_King: We previously discussed this issue. There is clear alignment that this is high-priority

Matt_King: We have multiple patterns plus the naming practice that needs to be updated. I don't know if it needs to be all done at once

Lola: Is this just editorial changes, then?

Matt_King: Well, it's all documentation work. It's not editorial in the sense that we're changing the meeting... But it is writing

Lola: Is there a hard deadline?

Matt_King: No

Lola: You can assign it to me

Jem: Yay!

Matt_King: I recommend that you go through them one at a time. That will make it easier for us to review. Also, doing that first one will make it much more clear for how to do the rest

Matt_King: In the "ARIA Roles, States, and Properties" section

Jem: [reads the section]

Matt_King: The change would be for the label to the group

Matt_King: There are two elements here: buttons and groups

Matt_King: The bullet on the "radiogroup" element needs to change. Honestly, I'm not sure how we want to word it

Matt_King: The current wording describes what we want most of the time

Matt_King: Somehow, we have to come up with a wording that says... "Optionally if it doesn't have a visible label, it is labelled by aria-label, unless a label isn't necessary because the label on each button is sufficient for the user to fully comprehend the purpose of the radio"

Matt_King: That is definitely too wordy, but that's the general idea

Lola: That makes sense

Matt_King: We don't want to change the existing guidance. It should be perfect almost all the time, it's just that there are rare and exceptional circumstances (where there is no visible group and the labels on the buttons are sufficient)

Lola: Adam_Page, the examples that you mentioned in the beginning of the issue--are those just examples, or are those the three affected patterns

Adam_Page: Those are just examples. I didn't do a thorough dive through all of the APG pages

Matt_King: I think if you start with radio, we can do "word smithing" there. Then, whatever format we come up with for radio, it will probably be relatively easy to extend it to all these others. It's the same general problem, after all

Jem: Why are we trying to relax the requirement?

Matt_King: The argument in the ARIA working group was that forcing people to come up with an aria-label in circumstances where such a label isn't necessary, it can make accessibility work (and it creates work that doesn't need to be done)

Jem: got it

Matt_King: It's not super common, in my experience

Matt_King: Thanks to everyone for being here and supporting the APG!

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/joins/joins us today/

All speakers: Adam_Page, CurtBellew, Daniel, howard-e, Jem, Lola, Matt_King

Active on IRC: Adam_Page, Daniel, Jem, jugglinmike