Accessibility Minutes 2009 02 18

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URL: http://www.openajax.org/member/wiki/Accessibility_Minutes_2009_02_18

Contents

Participants

  • Jon Ferriaolo (IBM) - OAA Director
  • Jon Gunderson (University of Illinois)
  • Ken Jacobi (IBM-Rational/Watchfire)
  • Nathan Jakubiak (ParaSoft)
  • Preety Kumar (Deque)
  • Bill McKenna (IBM)
  • Rich Schwerdtfeger (IBM - chair)
  • Derk Stegemann (FIT)
  • Michael Squillace (IBM)


1. Goal of group

  • Goal is to test dynamic web pages using the ARIA taxonomy
  • Need tools that can test the page as it is dynamically changing
  • This is similar to functional testing the dynamic environment
  • We want to develop a common set of tools that can be used by a wide variety of rules engines
  • We want to be able to report accessibility information in relation to WCAG
  • We need to look at tools that help developers find the problems
  • This effort is basically to try to spring board this effort to create much better tools
  • Microsoft is not here today, but Adobe and Microsoft
  • Jon Gunderson talks about:
  • Interested in rules that are library independent, so not specific to a particular toollkit GWT and Dojo
  • Ken: We have enhancements and a roadmap for the product, but should talk to you privately, but we want to spread the used of the tools by IBM consultants
  • Nathan: We are similar to Ken, we are planning to enhance accessibility testing for rich internet applications, we want to learn from the knowledge of people who have been working on accessibility
  • Derk: We want to have automatic testing rules, but some things need to be tested manually. We do not use a browser for the testing.
  • RS: You need to be attached to the browser
  • Jon: Describes about the use of the tools at the University of illinois and the importance of automated tools in helping web developers and companies make more accessibility

2. What is a reasonable meeting schedule for this group

  • Some people feel weekly is good for starting out
  • We will start by meeting weekly for an hour or less at the same time

3. Overview from my perspective (RS)

  • We need to run tests as the user interacts with the web page
  • For example when using a menu, the menuitem has a parent of menu roles and are consistent with the ARIA specification, so syntactically valid
  • test have to be triggers with focus changes and waiting for content to be updated
  • There are landmark roles for different sections, are sections marked up are they described
  • How do developers feel about warning levels?
  • For example there is a div with a border with some content, we warn the user that there is no landmark and no description
  • We need to bridge between static and dynamic content
  • Developers like specific feedback on accessibility on the elemnet level and examples of the correct way
  • People can use headers instead of aria regions
  • Regional can use both ARIA and header markup
  • Some of the reporting is what the tester could take to a developer
  • How do represent the information, use XPath
  • Tools might be different dependent on the task people are doing
  • The person will need to start a test and begin a log of accessibility problems
  • Allow the user to annotate the information
  • I think a log describing user actions and accessibility changes is good
  • How would the annotation system work, in annotations who would use them, I need to think through them
  • As errors and warnings are generated

4. Rules representation

Jon: We are investigating YSlow's (Yahoo performance analyzer plug-in for Firefox) rules engine but it would need extending

RS: What formats should we best represent our generic rules in (Schematron, Our own XML Grammar, JSON/JavaScript)?

RS: I don't believe schematron is flexible enough given the varying ways that we create content

Jon: I don't like schematron.

RS: Too many dependencies on other XML modules like XPath and XSLT

Group: General agreement not to use Schematron

RS: IT would appear that JSON/JavaScript would work and is flexible. Would that work for the group?

Group: Unanimously voted to use JSON/JavaScript to represent the rules

5. Model and test of Implementation

RS: Mike, there is a new Java plug-in applet that allows generic DOM evaluation?

Mike: Yes, provides direct interaction with the DOM

RS: This works for IE and FF?

Mike: Yes

RS: Do all people here support more than these browsers?

group: We support only these two browsers.

Mike: Java 6 update 10 comes with the new applet support for the DOM

Rich: So we can use JSON/JavaScript here?

Mike: Yes

Rich: So you are adapting your test tool to do the modeling? How long will this take?

Mike: Potentially up to three months.

Rich: Need to

Rich: Challenge will be how we test for keyboard style guide compatibility. Preety, what your thoughts?

Preety: I have to come back and think about this.

Action: Preety to come to come to next meeting with some thoughts around testing the keyboard

Rich: We can discuss at the next meeting

6. Reporting Best Practices

Rich: I think the challenge will be switching to a Functional Verification Test strategy since the accessibility of the page changes as you operate it.

Rich: More like a test run

Rich: Is there a way for the tester to annotate the test - such as "I am exercising the Lotus Connections WIKI?

group: no conclusions here

7.Test Strategies

Rich: need to be able to test for <divs> which have styling and no semantics that there shoud be some sort of warning like lack of aria support

Preety: Yes, should be a warning. If we have s border on a section this could be a warning.

Rich: Need to flag errors if things like aria properties do not match the role of the element

Rich: Also need to make sure the document structure around an element having an ARIA role matches its design pattern e.g. 

<div role="menu">
<div role="menuitem">foo</div>
<div role="menuitem">bar</div>
<div role="menuitem">baz</div>
</div>

8. ERT/ATAG

Rich: What about ERT. How should they play into this?

Mike: We may be able to use ERT but we need to discuss next week with Johannes

Dirk: Yes, I am very interested in this

Rich: Sueann, regarding ATAG, are they in working draft stage?

Sueann: Yes. I need to bring this work back to the ATAG group to see how we can incorporate it in ATAG. I will do that.

8. Next steps

Rich/Mike to provide thoughts on types of tests to perform and look for - to get the group started

Preety to look at keyboard design pattern testing and how should approach

Jon Ferraiolo - To consider feeds for minutes, etc.

Meeting is next week at the same time.

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