W3C

– DRAFT –
ARIA Authoring Practices Task Force

19 August 2025

Attendees

Present
Adam_Page, arigilmore, BryanGaraventa, CurtBellew, howard-e, Jema, Jemma, jugglinmike, Matt_King, siri
Regrets
-
Chair
-
Scribe
jugglinmike

Meeting minutes

Setup and Review Agenda

https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/wiki/August-19%2C-2025-Agenda

Jem: Any requests for change to agenda?

Jem: Hearing none, we'll stick with the agenda as scheduled

Jem: Next meeting: August 26

Publication planning

Matt_King: Last week, we talked about setting September 3rd as our target. That's the Wednesday after Labor Day

Matt_King: We have two pull requests that are already merged and ready to go, and we have four more that are on the list for potential inclusion

Matt_King: I want to touch base on two of those which are just pending review

Matt_King: And we have Adam_Page's spin button change on the agenda

<Jem> w3c/aria-practices#3320

Matt_King: The first pending review is pull request #3320 (the pattern pages--adding a link to the "read this first" to the top")

Matt_King: We were awaiting a pull request to the "build" repository, and once that is confirmed good and ready-to-merge, then I would merge this one year

howard-e: That one hasn't been reviewed, yet, but it's been prioritized internally. I'm hoping it will be reviewed and merged later today

Matt_King: Got it

Matt_King: Then, the other pull request #3213

w3c/aria-practices#3213

Matt_King: Jon believes the iOS problem has gone away

arigilmore: I tried it again. I updated my phone and cleared my cache, but I'm still seeing the same issue

Adam_Page: I haven't had a chance to check it out, yet, but I will

Matt_King: arigilmore, do you see the same problem on the production website?

arigilmore: On production, it came up normally. I tested again after updating and clearing my cache. I'm not sure what's going on

Matt_King: Maybe if either of you two reviewers have an opportunity to look at the actual code, feedback on potential causes of this bug would surely be helpful to Jon

PR 3354: Fix toolbar test failure

github: https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/pull/3354#js-repo-pjax-container

Matt_King: This is howard-e's pull request

Matt_King: howard-e can you explain the change?

howard-e: Sure. This is for the toolbar. There's a set of options that it opens. Those options can then be clicked

howard-e: This is just a quick patch, but I think there's something more pressing, here.

howard-e: This patch works because closing the menu again before trying to open another option

howard-e: I'm not sure why it works this way. I stepped back through the Git history, and the behavior is present there, too

howard-e: I can't replicate this normally; it's behavior we observe in the test

Matt_King: If you go to the APG and go to the toolbar and click a menu item, does it actually close?

howard-e: Yes

Matt_King: Is it closing when you operate it with a keyboard in production?

howard-e: Yes, it is. I'm not sure what's happening

Matt_King: So in the headless browser environment, the menu appears to stay open

howard-e: Correct

howard-e: The change here just checks to see if the menu is open

Matt_King: So this right here is just a change to the regression test code, right

howard-e: Yes

howard-e: I want to leave the issue open, though, to investigate further why it is like this

Matt_King: Can we get a reviewer on this pull request?

Adam_Page: I'll do that!

Matt_King: Thank you, Adam_Page

Jem: In the issue, it says aria-checked, but the pattern talks about a button with aria-expanded

howard-e: There is a button that's controlling the menu. It has an "aria-expanded" attribute on it.

Matt_King: That's correct; it should have "aria-expanded"

howard-e: The test loops through the options when the option is opened, and it clicks on one. It expects that aria-expanded should be set to "false", and that doesn't happen

Jem: But the issue says "aria-checked" and not "aria-expanded"

howard-e: The assertion itself isn't compromised; it's the way to get to the assertion

Jem: So can we ignore the assertion about aria-checked?

howard-e: Yes, that's fine

Matt_King: howard-e is saying that the fundamental issue is that we should need this workaround. Something it preventing "aria-checked" from being set in the test environment (and outside the environment, it works appropriately)

howard-e: That's correct

Matt_King: Okay, yes. This workaround bugs me, so I support digging deeper

Matt_King: I guess we might want to remove this change later if we can figure out why we need it in the first place

howard-e: I agree

Matt_King: Okay, then I guess we want a comment in the code reminding ourselves to remove it in the future

howard-e: I can do that

howard-e: This week, I'm going to try to prioritize doing the research here

Matt_King: Great. This points to a potential problem in the test environment itself

PR 3328: Add Quantity Spin Button

github: w3c/aria-practices#3328

Matt_King: We want to get reviewers assigned

Adam_Page: I've addressed the failing tests

Matt_King: I'm assigned as a reviewer, but we don't have anybody else looking at the code or the visual design

Adam_Page: howard-e just gave me a review, but it would be great to have more reviewers

arigilmore: I can do a review of the visual design

Adam_Page: Thanks, arigilmore

Jem: I've assigned arigilmore

siri: You can add me, too

Matt_King: Great. Siri, if you want to test it on mobile

siri: I will try to do it over the weekend

Adam_Page: I'm going on vacation starting Wednesday of next week, so if we want to have this ready for the next publication, then I will need review feedback by Tuesday

Jem: I'll add a link directly to the example

PR 3311: Add note about pointer activation and roving tabindex

github: w3c/aria-practices#3311

Matt_King: This is a change to the keyboard section. Patrick submitted a pull request that's related to an issue he raised

<siri> can you add me as reveiwer to the 3328 bug?

Matt_King: This kind of gets at the changes that were made to the editor menu bar

Matt_King: I've added myself as a reviewer

Matt_King: I will be looking at it from the point of clarity. From an editorial standpoint: "is it saying what it says clearly?"

Matt_King: I'd like someone else to review and decide if it is saying what it needs to say

arigilmore: I can try to take a look

Matt_King: Okay, that would be helpful

Jem: I've assigned arigilmore

Issue 3353: Select-Only Combobox example: list popup not operable with arrows when Voice Over is on

github: w3c/aria-practices#3353

Jem: It was opened last week

Matt_King: Someone is getting different behavior in Chrome versus Safari

Matt_King: We need to figure out if this is related to browser or screen reader functionality? Or is it something to do with the select-only combobox code?

Matt_King: Is there anyone who's available to do some root-cause analysis

Adam_Page: I'm unable to reproduce this. I think it would be good to ask the reporter for the software versions in use

Matt_King: Could you add a comment, Adam_Page, with your versions? Both macOS and Chrome?

<Jem> w3c/aria-practices#3353

Adam_Page: You bet. I'll also try it on a second macBook (since I have one handy)

Matt_King: Awesome!

Matt_King: I'm not going to label this, yet, because we don't know if it's a bug or not

PR 3304 : Removed timeout code for reseting search string in select only combobox

github: w3c/aria-practices#3304

Matt_King: This is Jon's pull request, and it's a draft

Matt_King: I asked Jon some questions in a comment

Matt_King: I have a feeling that this is not a pull request to make a change

Matt_King: I suggest we skip this until we can discuss with Jon

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

Diagnostics

Maybe present: Jem

All speakers: Adam_Page, arigilmore, howard-e, Jem, Matt_King, siri

Active on IRC: Jem, jugglinmike, siri