Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Salim — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:56:44 GMT

Recently, i was trying to work with IE tabs. I was surprise to learn that MS did not put full support in working with IE tabs. I was trying to switch IE tabs programmatically but there is nothing available. Only thing that can work is sending keys which is very unreliable hence cannot be used.

I hope IE 8 might solve that problem and support the developers by making APIs available to switch IE tabs in windows applications.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

steve_web — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:04:30 GMT

Yeah this has been missing since IE7. Then again I would be a bit weary of trying to control multiple tabs since IE has issues with improperly cloning the JavaScript Window hierarchy in IE7 and IE8 (confirmed to remain broken in IE8 RTM)

https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=384843

I'm sure if they exposed an API to create and manipulate tabs there would be some issues to deal with.

Since IE8 is almost at the RC stage I highly doubt that any API exposure will be made available any time soon.

The good news is that handling tabs in say Firefox is a piece of cake, complete with an API.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Dave — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:17:32 GMT

> One syntax that works across all IE8 modes

Is this consistency only for ARIA attributes, or for *all* attributes? If it's only for ARIA it seems like you have made things more inconsistent.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

kL — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:22:57 GMT

Thanks.

reasons_IE_is_evil--;

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

IE bundling is ILLEGAL — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:39:06 GMT

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/159663.asp?source=mypi

"Microsoft said this morning that the European Commission had issued a statement saying that its "preliminary view" was that the inclusion of Internet Explorer in its operating systems violated European law."

Bundling IE in Windows to stifle competition, choice and innovation is illegal now.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Arieta — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:53:12 GMT

to "IE bundling is ILLEGAL"

If IE was not bundled with Windows, how would you visit Mozillas page for downloading Firefox?

Right, you would FTP it. Except that you can't FTP it either, because you have no FTP clients installed... and you don't have a browser to visit any websites from where you can install any.

WHOOPS.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Wraith Daquell — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:13:33 GMT

@IE bundling is ILLEGAL:

Right. And, I suppose Apple doesn't bundle Safari and *nix doesn't bundle Firefox or something else to browse with. Oh, but I see the greeaaat logic in assuming that Microsoft will bundle something OTHER than their own browser just to make a few bitter people happy. The European Union is pulling a smart on there.

What is this world coming to? I can see it now: "Intel ships own chips on motherboard -- sued for not offering AMD and NVIDIA alternatives."

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Krzysztof Szafranek — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:48:52 GMT

It's a great news you decided to follow existing standard and stick to the way other browsers are already handling ARIA attributes.

On the sidenote, you guys must have a tough skin as even the news about IE actually FOLLOWING the standard must be always accompanied by dozens of not-so-relevant-right-now comments about the browser's failures ;).

Keep following the standards and thanks for what's been already done with IE8 in this regard.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

JAB Creations — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:18:58 GMT

I'm currently working on an AJAX based chat room and I'm wondering for the blind if I could use ARIA to have the screen reader read new messages that appear on the screen in a different element.

Each message has it's own id attribute with a unique value so to select the id of the divisible layer I would use document.getElementById('row_238'). When referencing that element (or to software programmers the "node" in JavaScript) what in JavaScript would I do to trigger ARIA to have the screen reader read the element's text out loud?

I'm running IE8-RC1 so what software would I need to emulate what a blind user would be using so I could get IE8 to read the chat message out loud on my own computer? Thanks in advance!

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Dan — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:28:20 GMT

JABCreations, since IE8-RC1 hasn't been released yet, you're not using it. Are you using the December build from Connect?

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

JAB Creations — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:59:19 GMT

@Dan, then what was that build called? I don't recall anyone referring to it as Beta 3?

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Opera — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:07:11 GMT

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10144833-75.html

"We think it is right of the EU, for the sake of the consumers, to be concerned about someone potentially misusing their competitive power," Chief Development Officer Christen Krogh told CNET News. The EU action stems from a 2007 complaint by Opera.

"On behalf of all Internet users, we commend the Commission for taking the next step towards restoring competition in a market that Microsoft has strangled for more than a decade, wrote Jon von Tetzchner, Opera's CEO. "The Commission's Statement of Objections demonstrates that the Commission is serious about getting Microsoft to start competing on the merits in the browser market and letting consumers have a real choice of Internet browsers."

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Dan — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:11:57 GMT

On Connect, it's called the "IE8 Partner Build".

Microsoft says that the actual RC build is due later this month... http://bx.businessweek.com/apple/browser-showdown-at-the-churchill-club-ie-8-release-candidate-coming-this-month/6800630611208153745-3f61331535838927753ab9837bf34389/

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Ted — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:14:49 GMT

Anyone notice that Firefox, Google and Safari have had no problems getting more share in the browser market, but whiner Opera is still stuck under 1%?

Methinks maybe they should spend more time listening to users and less time complaining to big government.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Jared Smith — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:33:04 GMT

Thank you for taking this important step! This will certainly make it easier for developers to make accessible web application.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Jeff Walden — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 08:23:39 GMT

Well done!

My understanding was the previous situation was a limitation of how attributes and property lookups *in general* were handled; does this affect non-ARIA attribute names? Hacking that to specifically *and only* support ARIA seems like a lot of trouble to preserve more incompatibilities and non-conformance, and I hope you haven't done so but rather supported all attributes of this form.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Olly Hodgson — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:39:57 GMT

Thank-you - this'll make ARIA support significantly simpler :)

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:01:48 GMT

@JAB Creations

"I'm currently working on an AJAX based chat room and I'm wondering for the blind if I could use ARIA to have the screen reader read new messages that appear on the screen in a different element."

I'd recommend taking a look at Reefchat ( http://reefchat.overscore.com/ ) and Chatzilla ( http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/ ) as these both use provide an ARIA-enhanced chat interface. The chat log itself goes into an ARIA live region ( http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#LiveRegions ).

In terms of testing tools, NVDA is a FOSS screen reader with live region support, but it's developers are mainly focused on Firefox support. JAWS is the most popular screen reader, at least in English-speaking countries. I assume its live region support (which appeared in version 10) works with IE8 as well as Firefox; if not that will likely appear with the next version. JAWS is expensive; there's a trial version available, but its EULA forbids using it for web testing. Given the complexities of mimicking a screen reader user's experience, I'd recommend playing with NVDA a bit but using real screen readers users to test your software; see http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/26-accessibility-testing/#recruitingtesters for a list of forums and mailing lists where you can get user feedback.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

ryan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:01:14 GMT

@JAB Creations: Its called IE8 PR1 short for Internet Explorer 8 Partner Release 1.

The RC1 (Release Candidate 1) is due out sometime this quarter.

(depending on the number of bugs/fixes/and critical issues in the RC1, there may be an RC2,RC3 etc.)

Finally, IE8 RTM (Release To Market) will be released at which point regular users can go download and install this final build (and IT admins can block it if it trully breaks their in-house apps due to bad design or lack of forward portability)

Personally, I wouldn't touch any web application that didn't work in multiple browsers, those that did in the past are feeling the pain now.

WAI-ARIA

Pietro Brambati Blog — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:08:19 GMT

Fino a qualche mese fa, non ero a conoscenza di queste specifiche ( Accessible Rich Internet Applications

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

David Lantner — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:11:27 GMT

It's great to see the team responding to feedback. Following the "standardized syntax" means that more developers will implement ARIA and more users will benefit.

@JAB Creations: I concur with Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis; the beauty of ARIA Live Regions is that you can instruct the screen reader (or other assistive technology) to announce new content inside the chat area rather than dealing with every new piece of dialog.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Dating — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:05:50 GMT

It's a great news you decided to follow existing standard and stick to the way other browsers are already handling ARIA attributes.

re: Accessibility: Improved ARIA Support in the IE8 RC

Terrie Strickland — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:44:29 GMT

I am new to computers I am having trouble connecting to IE I have a computer that states I have Windows Vista, I have been a problem disconnecting from a website Pogo.com. if you would please respond

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사용자 보조: IE8 RC의 ARIA 지원 강화

IE8 팀 블로그 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:10:40 GMT

Internet Explorer 의 프로그램 관리자인 Tony Ross 입니다. IE 팀은 IE8 를 가능한 가장 사용하기 쉬운 웹 브라우저가 될 수 있도록 개발하고 있습니다. 또