This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.

Bug 28317 - Need aria-roledescription for a localized description of an app-specific role
Summary: Need aria-roledescription for a localized description of an app-specific role
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: ARIA
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Spec (show other bugs)
Version: 1.1
Hardware: PC All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: James Craig
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2015-03-23 15:49 UTC by Dominic Mazzoni
Modified: 2018-05-03 21:10 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Dominic Mazzoni 2015-03-23 15:49:06 UTC
I propose that we add a new attribute aria-roledescription.

The value of this attribute would be a localized string containing specific text that could be communicated to the user as a more specific description of the actual ARIA role of the element.

The use case this solves is when an application has a UI widget that doesn't fit any of the existing ARIA roles, and just calling it one of the existing ARIA roles without any additional explanation would be confusing.

A role description does not affect the semantics in any way. AT must not interpret the string, they should just present it in place of the usual text used to describe that role.

The use case is for controls that are obscure enough that they don't belong in ARIA, but are nevertheless useful for some applications that employ them.

* A drawer handle
* A listbox that wraps around
* A 4-way toggle button
* A backwards slider