December 2018 - Suman’s Accessibility blog

Description

None role(role=”none”) in aria1.1 is nothing different from presentation role(role=”presentation”) in aria1.0 and they both are one and the same. Presentation/none role to be used in order to hide the semantics to the assistive technology users. For some reason, authors/developers are getting confused with the term “presentation” as well as the intended meaning of presentation role. Many authors started thinking that both aria-hidden and presentation role are one and the same but it is not true. To put the things simpler, aria-hidden attribute is to hide the content from the assistive technology users whereas presentation role is to hide the semantics(role) from the assistive technology users. Aria-hidden attribute and presentation role are meant to serve the different purposes. In any case, let me not confuse you more about aria-hidden attribute over here and will cover aria-hidden attribute separately in the future blog posts.

To avoid all the confusions surrounded with the term “presentation”, aria1.1 introduce new role called none role. The term “none” itself conveys that element would not have any role and none is the synonym of presentation. The specification believes that the term “none” would not confuse the authors/developers any more. Till the support of none role is robust, authors are advised to use the presentation role only. When none role is applied then element semantics and any of it’s children semantics are going to be removed from the accessibility tree and this would be better understood in the coming sections. However, the content and the descendants elements are going to remain the same in the accessibility tree

The major difference between all other aria roles and the none role is that all other aria roles are used to convey the semantics whereas none role is to not to convey the semantics. The intended use is when an element is used to change the look of the page but does not have all the functional, interactive, or structural relevance implied by the element type. You might be wondering in which situations we might have to use none role. There are certain scenarios where reading the semantics to the screen reader users would create the problem in understanding the page structure. In addition, reading the semantics that are for layout purposes would result too verbose for the screen reader users to understand the things properly on the page. Let us discuss some of those scenarios

Scenarios to use role=”none”

There is text with heading mark-up but this text is not heading visually, logically, and functionally on the page. Having heading mark-up to that text would create a problem in understanding the page structure to the screen reader users. Authors need to remove heading mark-up. In order to remove the heading mark-up, authors either can remove heading tag from the DOM or can use role=”none”
There is image that is used for the decorative purpose. Screen readers must ignore the decorative images. For the screen readers to ignore the decorative images, authors either need to set alt as null(alt=””) or use role=”none”
There is content with table mark-up but this table is for the layout purpose. Having table mark-up for that content would cause confusion to the screen reader users. Authors need to remove table mark-up. In order to remove the table mark-up, authors either can remove table tag and it’s children from the DOM or can use role=”none”. The important point to remember here is that table semantics and it’s children semantics(such as <th>, <tbody>, <tr>, <td> and so on..) are going to be removed from the accessibility tree when role=”none” is applied.

Author notes

Authors must not use role=”none” on the interactive or focusable elements
Authors must not use role=”none” on the element that has the WAI ARIA global attributes(ex: aria-haspopup). If authors do so then user agents ignore the presence of the role=”none”
Authors can also set role as “none presentation” for backward compatibility

Sample code snippet

If given

<li> Sample Content </li>

<li> More Sample Content </li>

</ul>

Then assistive technologies like screen reader would not announce the list semantics

References

What the heck is AHG conference all about?

Early this year, I spoke in the CSUN international conference. Later this year, I got another opportunity to speak in the international conference, and it was accessing higher ground conference. The Short form of accessing higher ground is AHG. AHG focuses on the implementation and benefits of: accessible media, Inclusive Design, accessible curriculum, and Assistive Technology in the university, business and public setting, read more about AHG here. AHG takes places every year and this year(2018) conference has taken place from 12^th November to 16^th November at Westin, Westminster Colorado, USA. The first 2 days of the conference usually go with some workshops/trainings and the next 3 days of the conference usually go with some technical sessions.

A little about how did my session go

I have travelled all the way from India for this conference to present the ARIA 1.1 topic and my topic name was WAI ARIA 1.1: an in depth view into new and shiny. First of all, I want to thank my employer(Deque) for giving such a wonderful opportunity. As per the schedule, I spoke on my topic on 15^th November at 8am. Although few technical glitches at the beginning, the session went well but there were less number of participants. Even though participants were less, there were more number of questions at the end, and I am glad I could answer most of the queries! In fact, there were healthy debates too!

what did I learn?

In my view, attending the conference is kind of mutual benefit for the both parties and it is beauty of the conference! We get the opportunity to learn what others are talking, and we also get the opportunity to share our knowledge with the big crowd. With that said, lot of educational institutions such as universities and colleges participated in this conference. Of course, few non-education institutions also participated here. People in the conference were talking on the various topics such as document accessibility, multimedia accessibility, web accessibility, classroom accessibility, math accessibility, building the accessible course/curriculum/educational material, EPUB adoptions, software accessibility like Zoom, MS word, MS power point, UDL adoptions, , different assistive technologies, and so on. I heard more on document accessibility though as this conference was more of educational related platform.

As mentioned earlier, 3 days of the conference usually go with lot of technical sessions. I have looked at 3 days schedule and chosen some of the sessions to attend. I attended the sessions that were relevant to web accessibility and the sessions that could help me to become independent at my work. Below are some of the sessions that I attended along with my learnings

Session name: Making Websites Usable, Not Just Accessible

This session was presented by Karen Hawkins, Senior Experience Designer, Publicis.Sapient. it went for 2 hours long. The interesting thing in this session was that she explained how the end user pain would be while browsing the ecommerce website although it was accessible site. She highlighted possible usability issues such as clumsy filters, not notifying the changes to the screen reader users, and so on.. in the ecommerce website. She highlighted the usability issues starting from product landing page till placing the order. At the end, she mentioned that they would be releasing accessible and usable ecommerce templet in the mid of the next year. They said that this new templet would help everyone who would like to make their ecommerce website accessible and usable and that was very exciting thing! Looking forward to see the great ecommerce templet from these people!

Session name: How to CADET: free caption and audio description authoring software from WGBH’s NCAM

This session was presented by Bryan Gould, Director , WGBH/NCAM. He explained how easy to add/edit the captions and audio descriptions scripts with the help of their CADET tool. CADET tool is free and downloadable software. In addition, they said that the interface of this tool would be very much accessible unlike other tools in the market.

Session name: What is VPAT® 2.0?

This session was presented by Joe Humbert, Senior Accessibility Analyst, Interactive Accessibility. The funny thing was, by the time this session was scheduled, VPAT 2.2 had been released too! He mentioned about that fact at the beginning of his session. He highlighted the one of the major changes from VPAT 2.0 to VPAT 2.2 was that there would not be “supports with exceptions” status in 2.2 and it got changed to “partially supports”. He explained majorly the difference between from 1.0 to 2.0 in this session. At the end, when he opened for the questions then we all of us were asking when WCAG2.1 would be incorporated in the VPAT. Immediately, we got the response from the women who sat behind and introducing herself that “I am from ITI and works for the VPAT”. Everybody got shocked and surprised! She responded that they started working on incorporating the WCAG2.1 in the VPAT and would release the next version in few months. By the way, ITI is the organization who develops the VPAT. Anyways, I have got opportunity to meet such a great person with the help of this session.

A quick tour on the booths/exhibitors

As like any other conferences, there were number of booths in this conference too. I think there were more than 30 booths here. As usual, all the booths were showcasing about their products and services. While I was visiting this booths, I found some interesting stuff. One of the interesting things was that many organizations were working in the PDF remediation space. In fact, some of the organizations(such as Onix-equidox, Appligent Document Solutions, Commonlook, Crawford Technologies, Pubcom, and so on..) developed their own PDF remediation tools too. I felt that Equidox PDF remediation tool by Onix was bit interesting with the advanced features that has! Apart from that, I have got opportunity to look at the other web accessibility tools such as Compliance Sheriff by a Cyxtera solution, Blackboard Ally, Dinolytics, and so on.. overall, I felt worth time spending on this booths.

How did I feel about the conference as a whole?

I felt that conference was very cool going. I like the way the technical sessions on those 3 days were scheduled. There were No back to back technical sessions and we used to have some breakout meetings once in every 2 hours. Breakout meetings/sessions such as round table and lunch breakouts were the another thing I wanted to highlight. These breakout sessions gave an opportunity to meet and talk to the various people and that was fantastic! Another cool thing was that audiences got an opportunity to rate the sessions that they attended. In fact, my session was rated 4.1 stars average rating out of 5 stars and I was very happy for that!

Oh, wait! I know your next question

Probably, your next question is going to be where I can access and download all these great AHG presentations. Here are the simple steps to download any AHG presentation

Open AHG schedule
It shows Wednesday schedule by default. You can view Thursday and Friday schedules by clicking on the corresponding links on the same web page
Choose any topic that is relevant for you and activate the link
It opens the session information with summary, speakers, abstract, handouts, and so on..
Navigate to the handout section and activate the link
That is all and presentation/ppt/deck/PDF is going to be downloaded for that topic