Posts Tagged ‘aria’

Screen readers, HTML5, ARIA – all happy together?

Posted on in WWW.

This week I converted a site from XHTML 1 to HTML5, and as part of this I moved the ARIA landmark role attributes from generic div elements to various new elements. And I got to wondering whether this could have unforeseen consequences.

I know from feedback that the ARIA landmark roles have proved useful for some users of this site, so it would be a bad move if this stopped working because their screen readers didn’t recognise the role attributes on “unknown” elements.

<div role="banner"> vs <header role="banner">

I guess what this boils down to, are there any user agents that (a) support the role attribute and (b) use the DOM as generated by a browser engine that fails to recognise HTML5 elements?

Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer won’t style HTML5 elements (though IE will after applying a little JavaScript magic) but styling isn’t the same as recognised at a basic level.

This seems like an edge case, as most of the reports I’ve found whilst searching have indicated that HTML5+ARIA is a good thing and works, but most of the reports don’t specify versions of user agents used. Does anyone have any links to first hand research into this issue?

Very True Mood: (curious) curious
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Any other Tuesday…

Posted on in Music, My Life, TV, WWW, Work.

Today I …

  • Had my photo used in a (gay) mockup of a what our Valentine’s Day homepage could look like.
  • Had lots of fun combining Ajax, JSON, RSS, JSP and jQuery in various combinations.
  • Moved the breadcrumb trail from just inside the main content area to just before it … in many, many templates.
  • Wondered whether any of the ARIA landmark roles was suitable for a block that contained a breadcrumb trail, a print button and an RSS feed button. contentinfo or nothing seem to be the options.
  • Told my boss that I needed to refactor all the JavasScript (that I had written in the first place) on the whole site.
  • Wasn’t ill enough to go home to bed, maybe tomorrow. (Damn this really quite good immune system!)
  • Boggled at the photos of Ben Dalby in a straight jacket!
  • Spent most of Survivors thinking about the benefits of CGI vs something actually decent looking when it came to collapsing buildings.
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Ragnarok 55 and other SFSFW news

Posted on in Blogs, Games, Magazines, Miniatures, WWW.

Ragnarok 55The latest issue of Ragnarok, the journal of fantasy and science fiction wargaming, was published this week and contains the usual mix of useful and off-the-wall articles. I liked the Daleks, the moon landings and the discussion on alternative history.

The SFSFW have been busy and can now be found on Twitter and Facebook. They also have their own blog (which I’m syndicating on LiveJournal, if that’s your preferred platform).

Today, I’ve been updating the society’s web site:

  • Combined two stylesheets into one (originally the second stylesheet had been @imported in order to hide it from Netscape 4, those were not the good old days)
  • Converted the site to HTML 5, just because I can, and added some ARIA role attributes for accessibility
  • Pulled in the latest blog posts onto the homepage (using Magpie RSS to do so)
  • Added all the new sites to the navigation
  • Added social bookmarking links to most pages so visitors can send the page straight to Google, Facebook, LiveJournal, Delicious, Stumbleupon or Twitter

Total domination of the interwebs, here we come!

Very True Mood: (accomplished) accomplished
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