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Bug 10495 - default role(s) "inheriting" for figure - common use cases
Summary: default role(s) "inheriting" for figure - common use cases
Status: VERIFIED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P1 major
Target Milestone: LC
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/content-...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on: 10066 10484
Blocks:
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Reported: 2010-08-29 13:23 UTC by Leif Halvard Silli
Modified: 2010-12-01 15:24 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

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Description Leif Halvard Silli 2010-08-29 13:23:46 UTC
REQUEST 1: when the sole content of a <figure>, apart from <figcaption>, is a single element  (which can have its own children) and if that single element has a relevant[*] *default* ARIA @role, THEN the <figure> will default to the same @role as the default role of that single element.

[*] Some examples of relevant native/default ARIA element/role combinations: <img> (which defaults to role="img"), <table> (which at least currently defaults to grid).

REQUEST 2: Some elements which do not have a logical ARIA role (examples: <audio>, <video>) should lead to similar effects: E.g in this example, the figure element should be seen as being an "audio region": <figure><audio><figcaption>Recording 1</figcaption</figure>

EXAMPLES:

<img> EXAMPLE : http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/embedded-content-1.html#alt

Section '4.8.1.1 Requirements for providing text to act as an alternative for images' contains several examples where an <img> element and a <figcaption> element is the sole content of the <figure>.

However, none of those <figure> elements contains any role="img" attribute. Therefore it is, for the moment, unclar what kind of <figure>, the <figcaption> is captioning. And thus, the relationship between <img> and <figcaption> is unclear. The examples also makes no use or @aria-labelledby

Proposal for this particular use case: Whenever the sole content of <figure> is an <img> and <figcaption>, then the <figure> is considered to have role="img". 

<table>/<caption> EXAMPLE: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/tabular-data.html#the-caption-element

Section '4.9.2 The caption element' says that ]]When a table element is the only content in a figure element other than the figcaption, the caption element should be omitted in favor of the figcaption.[[

This is a problematic advice, given that <figure> has no default role, while <table>, if no default @role, at the very least is treated as a table by user agents  which thus know that there is a relationship between <caption> and <table>.

Proposal for this particular  use case: whenever a <table> or a <table> + <figcaption> is the sole content of a <figure>, the then <figure> element should be considered as having role="grid".
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/complete#grid

<audio>/<video> EXAMPLE

[ information to be added ] Logically, ARIA should have had something like role="audio" and role="video" which worked a little bit similar to role="img".
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-09-07 17:52:52 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: Invalid use of bug system. Please file just one issue per bug.