[wac] ARIA specifications and browser/library implementations firming up, some resources

[Ken Petri]

Hi All,

This email contains some fairly esoteric JavaScript-related stuff. So,
if you aren't into JavaScript and accessibility, you may want to hit
delete. However, I thought enough of this was relevant to the OSU web
development community to pump it out to both the WAC and OSU
webmasters lists. Apologies for any duplications

As you may know, ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is the
emerging specification taking shape at the W3C for enabling
accessibility for web applications. The roadmap for the specifications
is here: http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-roadmap/.

Specifically, ARIA allows for any element to be assigned roles,
states, and properties the values of which can be made available to
assistive technologies, such as screen readers. It also provides for a
way to inform screen readers and other AT of AJAX/asynchronous updates
to "live regions" on a page.

This allows for developers to make custom widgets that can "talk" to
AT (by communicating through the browser to MSAA, the accessibility
layer in Windows, or, in the case of FireVox
(http://firevox.clcworld.net/), by reading from the browser DOM).
Right now, to my knowledge, there is only one widget toolkit that has
extensive ARIA support: Dojo (http://dojotoolkit.org). We have tested
a number of the Dojo version 1.0 widgets using Firefox and JAWS, with
good results.

Firefox was the first web browser to implement ARIA and its
implementation is undergoing major improvements for Firefox 3 (which
is now in beta). The latest versions of Opera also implement ARIA. I
have heard rumors that IE 8 will also support ARIA. (See the press
release from the newly formed Accessibility Interoperability Alliance
for hints pointing in that direction:
http://www.accessinteropalliance.org/newsevents/pr121007.html.)

In sum, ARIA and a strong keyboard support model represent the most
promising means for access-enabling modern web (Web 2.0) applications.

Here are some select resources, should you want to investigate ARIA further:

-----------------
1.
Aaron Leventhal promotes, develops, and maintains ARIA for Mozilla.
This link is probably the best place to start:

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Accessible_DHTML.

The page not only describes ARIA and provides links to resources,
including working examples, it also has a chart that describes which
pieces of ARIA are understood by which screen readers.

2.
This thread from the jQuery Google group is partially a conversation
between John Resig, who wrote jQuery, and Chris Hoffman, who has
developed an ARIA plugin for jQuery:

http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-ui/browse_thread/thread/93602d59dbec08d0?hl=en

This link references jARIA
(http://www.outstandingelephant.com/jaria/), the plugin for jQuery
that can sniff for and dynamically insert and modify ARIA markup, and
discusses the current state of ARIA markup. Spoiler: namespaces are
out and "aria-" markup is in (good news for browsers and developers
who value simplicity). Firefox 3 is dropping support for ARIA
namespace markup. Dojo sniffs for Firefox 2 and implements the
namespacing for it. The toolkit toggles to "aria-" for other browsers
and Firefox 3. Cool!

3.
AxsJAX (pronounced "access jacks"): Charles Chen (developer of the
Firevox screen-reader for Firefox) and T.V. Raman, both from Google,
have released code that makes it possible to inject ARIA markup into a
live web application, on the fly. The most widely applicable means for
doing this is through Greasemonkey (AxsJAX installs as a Greasemonkey
script), but it can also be done using a bookmarklet, and Chen's
Firevox will enable ARIA enhancements for AxsJAX-scripted sites by
default:

http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/

A developer would write an AxsJAX script for a specific application
and AxsJAX would use that script to inject ARIA into the application,
automatically. So far, this seems to be the best way to ARIA-enable
3rd-party applications. Because Firevox runs in the browser and works
on Linux and Mac as well as windows, there is now potential for
support of ARIA outside of Windows. (Orca, a screen reader for Linux
under development by Sun, has some limited ARIA support. There is
nothing on the Mac (except for Firevox) that allows for ARIA.)

4.
Jon Gunderson at UIUC has been developing a number of test
implementations of ARIA-enabled widgets:

http://test.cita.uiuc.edu/aria/index.php

The widgets are currently using the namespaced ARIA syntax, but I'm
sure will move to the aria- syntax soon. As far as I know, Jon is the
only person in the country who is regularly giving workshops on how to
implement ARIA.
-----------------


Happy Holidays!

Regards,
ken
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  Ken Petri
  Program Director
  OSU Web Accessibility Center
  102D Pomerene Hall
  1760 Neil Avenue
  Columbus, Ohio  43210
  Phone: (614) 292-1760
  Fax: (614) 292-4190
  mailto:petri.1 at osu.edu
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