W3C

– DRAFT –
ARIA WG

12 February 2026

Attendees

Present
Adam_Page, benbeaudry, Daniel, dgrogan, Francis_Storr, giacomo-petri, Matt_King, pkra, sarah, Siri
Regrets
-
Chair
ValerieYoung
Scribe
cyns

Meeting minutes

New PR Triage

<github-bot> I can't comment on that because it doesn't look like a github issue to me.

spectranaut_: PR #2726 was reviewed last week.

Scott: this PR doesn't address his original issue. What is the use case here? Is it editable comboboxes
… aria-placeholder doesn't actually add a rendered placeholder

Sarah: when this is done with select-only, the placeholder is in the content. Should authors add the placeholder?

WPT Open PRs

<github-bot> I can't comment on that because it doesn't look like a github issue to me.

no open WPT PRs, James Craig is not here, skip

Deep Dive planning

<github-bot> I can't comment on that because it doesn't look like a github issue to me.

spectranaut_: no deep dives on list, no one asks for one

Add transparent generic definition and update accessibility parent and child defs

spectranaut_: this is just trying to make the spec more clear, no change to browsers

sarah: change to spec to align with what browsers already do

spectranaut_: what browser input is needed?

@sarah: jcraig and (I think someone from Chrome) didn't want a must for removing things from the a11y tree, and this should only define parent-child relationships. Moving to 7.1 would do that, so need input from browsers

pk: seems like spec and user agent sides are at odds. I find the definition and the whole section confusing. we could acknowledge that UA might leave nodes in, but the spec should be more clear to explain what parent-child relationships should be. Can we do that without forcing UA to do something they don't want to?

pk: almost seems contradictory, one section says to remove intermediate nodes, but this section assumes they're still there

sarah: may well be confusing!

pk: definition of accessibility object doesn't align with other definitions

benbeaudry: sarah can you remember who from Chromium objected? pls tag me so I can review more deeply

sarah: I remember james craig, I think someone from Chrome too

pk: gecko includes them

sarah: some browsers have the nodes, but they don't interfere with the tree. I remember from testing that browsers all handle it fine, but there can still be interviening generics

pk: want to meet up to hammer this out?

sarah: yes

spectranaut_: I think what peter is saying that it should be clear for developers reading it, because browser behavior is not going to change. It makes sense to me because I worked on child nodes before, but good argument that it's confusing. maybe something like generics shouldn't be included in a11y tree, but browsers can leave them

pk: spec should be talking about aria layer, not OS a11y tree

spectranaut_: developers will see the computed roles in browser dev tools, need to let them know to expect that. Does Ben need to review this?

sarah: I wanted to check my understanding that we don't want a browsers must, would still like that input, but don't need full review

daniel: we should clarify what counts as editorial. Does this modify a user agents must?

sarah: Peter's comment suggested a new browsers must, but it's not currently in the PR

aria-actions: handling focus when actions are synthetically triggered

spectranaut_: anything to review here?

sarah: no

spectranaut_: let's look at aria normative PR tracking board. Anything to call out?

<spectranaut_> board: https://github.com/orgs/w3c/projects/204

keithamus: has interop 26 been announced?

??: yes, announced today

Review PRs

keithamus: look at interop proposal 2717

<keithamus> w3c/aria#2717

spectranaut_: this needs reviews by srah, adrian, scott and cookiecrook

keithamus: needs more attention from WebKit

keithamus: one browser copied another, assumed that's correct, need input from accessibility experts from everywhere

scott: this matches what I assumed after talking to Aaron and Mason from Chrome

mattking: are there test cases or sample code that can be contributed to APG? Demo examples that can be used to test with AT

keithamus: yes, will look for some

<keithamus> https://una.im/popover-hint/ & https://mdn.github.io/dom-examples/popover-api/popover-hint/ have examples.

spectranaut_: does this belong in APG since it's HTML?

<keithamus> https://mdn.github.io/dom-examples/popover-api/

mattking: yes, we want to include HTML, especially open UI, has been on roadmap

mattking: can someone help explore this, so we can make sure we have tests

keithamus: popover=hint is mostly for tooltips, including rich tooltips

mattking: tooltip development examples is one of the oldest APG issues, no one has come up with a good one. maybe popover=hint will be it?

keithamus: there is also the interest for API, which may or may not ship, covers these interaction patterns

cyns: connect to old APG tooltip issue?

mattking: if we think that's right

keithamus: there are more coming

mattking: maybe this belongs in the tooltip example issue?

spectranaut_: assigning issue to keith to add popover examples

spectranaut_: sarah, still want to be a reviewer?

sarah: yes

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 248 (Mon Oct 27 20:04:16 2025 UTC).