Bug 109013 – AX: Some HTML native elements (header, section, footer, address) should have their own role descriptions instead of reusing the ARIA role descriptions (banner, region, contentinfo)

• Component: Accessibility
• Status: ASSIGNED

[James Craig]

<header> role description is 'banner' like [role="banner"]; we should add a new string for 'header'

[James Craig]

update role-subrole-description.html layout test when this is resolved.

[James Craig]

See also http://﷒0﷓

[James Craig]

http://webkit.org/b/109024

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/13658953>

[James Craig]

*** Bug 109024 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[James Craig]

Created attachment 198688 [details]
patch

[chris fleizach]

Comment on attachment 198688 [details]
patch

View in context: https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=198688&action=review

> Source/WebCore/English.lproj/Localizable.strings:688
> +/* accessibility role description for header element */

it seems confusing on the web to have a header and a heading. is there a difference?

> Source/WebCore/accessibility/mac/WebAccessibilityObjectWrapperMac.mm:1884
> +                if (m_object->renderer()->node()->hasTagName(headerTag))

the platform object shouldn't be reaching into the AX object like this. If this is a different role, then it should have a different AcccessibilityRole

[James Craig]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (From update of attachment 198688 [details])
> View in context: https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=198688&action=review
> 
> > Source/WebCore/English.lproj/Localizable.strings:688
> > +/* accessibility role description for header element */
> 
> it seems confusing on the web to have a header and a heading. is there a difference?

One is a landmark container encompassing the header contents of the page and would be spoken as "header landmark." The other contains heading text of various levels and is used through the document, spoken as "heading level 2." 

> > Source/WebCore/accessibility/mac/WebAccessibilityObjectWrapperMac.mm:1884
> > +                if (m_object->renderer()->node()->hasTagName(headerTag))
> 
> the platform object shouldn't be reaching into the AX object like this.

Is there a better way to determine tagName than this? I would prefer we store tagName, id, and other relevant DOM attributes in the AX object (and potentially expose them to the APIs directly too), but we don't currently.

> If this is a different role, then it should have a different AcccessibilityRole

I disagree. This is merely for UI clarity. Functionally these are identical roles in that they are both landmarks and used almost entirely interchangeably. The only thing I'm changing is the localized role description, because for example, we know that the author has specifically chosen the <footer> tag, so it's more appropriate to describe the section to the user as "footer" than as the generic "content information" landmark.

[James Craig]

What did we decide for this one? New webkit roles or special-cased role descriptions?

[James Craig]

Looking back, it seems we're going with the "new webkit roles" approach.

[James Craig]

*** Bug 83989 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Jason Kiss]

(In reply to comment #11)
> *** Bug 83989 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I can see how bug 83989 is a dupe of this bug if the intention is to give <address> an AXRoleDescription of "address" instead of "content information", although I'm not sure I understand why it's called a landmark in the first place. 

Is it the intention that all "html native landmarks" get treated this way, or just <header> and <footer> (and <section>, which isn't a landmark per se)? 

Thanks.

[James Craig]

Yes. <address> too. Removed the word "landmark" from the bug title.