Re: SVG: Accessible Forms

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Parent Message unknown Re: SVG: Accessible Forms

by Charles McCathieNevile-2 :: Rate this Message:

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Trimmed the cc-list a bit. It was really a bit over the top...

On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:40:51 +0600, ~:'' ありがとうございました  
<j.chetwynd@...> wrote:

> SVG: Accessible Forms
>
> What action is being taken to develop an accessible input form** for SVG?

Integrating aria into SVG

> can and will it be implemented by UA developers?

We believe it can be implemented - we worked quite hard on changing ARIA  
last year to make sure it would be possible to integrate it in both SVG  
and HTML (which hda quite different requirements).

> how long will we have to wait?

I don't know. We don't have a running implementation to show, but I am  
hoping for it to be available sooner rather than later.

> will it be easy for authors to use?

Yes. For most controls, you do something like

  <g aria-role="date-picker">
    <!-- some SVG to draw a date picker -->
  </g>

  <g aria-role="checkbox" aria-state="checked">
    <!-- something to click on and a link to a small script library that  
stores whether it was clicked, and updates the ARIA accordingly -->
  </g>

> **Input forms are the primary means that users have to purposefully and  
> intentionally input information.

indeed.

...
> the SVG example from the XForms test suite has only very partially been  
> implemented by the popular browsers:

The problem as I see it is that we have not seen sufficient demand for  
Xforms to implement it (which means we haven't even started to test the  
quality issues you talk about).

...
> furthermore it is significantly harder for an author to implement than  
> html forms.

Yes - although it gives more power. So far, ease of authoring seems to be  
more important.

> Do Xforms need to be explicitly focusable?
> my example uses anchors....

Form controls should in general. Using ARIA should mean the User Agent  
automatically makes them focusable.

cheers

Chaals

--
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com


Parent Message unknown Re: SVG: Accessible Forms

by Charles McCathieNevile-2 :: Rate this Message:

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On Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:38:00 +0600, ~:'' ありがとうございました  
<j.chetwynd@...> wrote:

> Chaals,
>
> thanks for yet another well considered and easy-to-read response*!
> your comments around ARIA and SVG are noted.
>
> however you fail to address the central issue, which as Filipe Sanches  
> wrote me in a private email, and which I believe correctly states the  
> case:
>
>> Implementing it is not trivial and that is why this kind of thing  
>> should be available as a general module. Preferably as part of the spec  
>> in order to get it into every UA.
>
> my query was intended to address this issue in particular. ie as to why  
> whereas accessible html forms had been around for about a decade,  
> accessible svg forms remain extremely hard to implement.

Because for SVG there was nothing formal like ARIA until now. There was  
the idea foreshadowed in the svg-access note[1] a decade ago of using  
metadata to tag objects - this dates from the very early days of what  
became ARIA, in discussions with Lisa Seeman of UBAccess and Rich  
Schwerdtfeger of IBM who followed this work through the spec editing  
process that eventually got us ARIA.

There was also work on using Xforms, for example the experimental work of  
X-smiles and the work of Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer. Unfortunately that  
never got traction for a variety of reasons (not least the failure of  
XHTML, meaning that little effort was made to develop better tools for the  
public to create content).

Effectively this was because there were not enough people working actively  
on making SVG accessible - so we are not much further ahead than we were 8  
years ago. Given the new and renewed interest in SVG by people who  
understand accessibility, I expect to see much more progress in the next 2  
years.

> SVG1.1 has now been implemented by many UA and browsers, but still miss  
> this vital  "user"  functionality.

Yes. So we are only now arriving at the stage of making this really  
possible. With ARIA in the spec, and with at least Opera working on  
implementation, it should become possible.

> There is a structural fault in the W3C process, and that is why process  
> are copied into this thread.

I think that should be a seperate thread - fixing the process and fixing  
the SVG problem are things that need to be done by different people.  
Mixing the two is likely to lead to more discussion about process and less  
action on anything :(

cheers

Chaals

--
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com