This bounced last time I tried to send. Trying again.
CB
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Safari/Webkit to add more accessibility support
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:39:10 -0400
From: Chris Blouch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X
by the blind <discuss@macvisionaries.com>
Hope this doesn't get to techie but it looks like two big accecssibility
wins for web authors are in the works.
1. Webkit to support tabindex for all elements
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7138
http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/32664
This was a huge hole that only Safari had. It meant that tabbing and
moving focus around correctly in dynamic web applications was not
possible. Looks like they are finally adding the ability to put a
tabindex on non-form elements and the tabindex="-1" to allow moving
focus to an item without it being added to the tab order.
2. Webkit to support basic ARIA
http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/32694
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12132
For those who aren't familiar, there is a w3c standard being worked out
called Accessible Rich Internet Applications or ARIA. This standard lets
a web browser pass critical state and role information to the
accessibility API so the screen reader knows what's going on. Today
there are tons of web widgets being constructed out of DIVs and
JavaScript which a screen reader has no idea what it really is. A tree
view might be rendered in the DOM as a pile of spans so there is no way
for AT to grok what is going on and give useful feedback. Webkit's
support of ARIA (along with Opera, Firefox and IE) will make navigation
of web widgets possible. While this current patch only adds the roles
button, checkbox, heading, link, radio and textbox, it's a start.
Some more info here:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2008-April/msg00225.html
This is good news.
CB
