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Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA)

This repository maintains specifications and related publications for the Accessible Rich Internet Applications suite of technologies. This is developed by the ARIA Working Group. The W3C staff contact is Daniel Montalvo. Please do not provide commit access to this repository without coordination.

The default branch has been renamed

If you have a local clone, run the following commands to update the name of the default branch.

$ git branch -m master main
$ git fetch origin
$ git branch -u origin/main main

Other Repositories

This repository is for the main deliverable of the ARIA Working Group, Accessible Rich Internet Applications. There are several other deliverables, such as ARIA modules, Accessibility API Mappings, and support documents. These are maintained in separate repositories listed on the ARIA Contribution page. Please file issues in the repository specific to the specification to which the issue applies.

Contributing to this Repository

Please review the ARIA Process Document for information about how the working group tracks issues and pull request.

Role of Editors

Only formally designated editors have commit access to this repository. Editors are designated by the Working Group Chair and make the following commitments:

  • Execute the consensus of the Working Group regardless of personal opinion;
  • Seek Working Group review of substantive technical issues;
  • In good faith separate editorial issues, which may be addressed without explicit review requests, from substantive issues which require review;
  • Follow the W3C Manual of Style and the Chicago Manual of Style;
  • Follow W3C Editors guidelines.

Non-Editor Contributions

Working Group participants and members of the public without commit privileges may contribute to this repository in the following ways:

Issues can be assigned to people who are members of the ARIA Contributors team. Editors can add people to this team.

When preparing GitHub pull requests:

  • Provide a complete summary and description for each pull request. The Working Group needs to understand the rationale for proposed changes. This description may need to be very detailed in some cases, or may be quite brief, for example if providing a change to address a spelling issue.
  • Following the editorial documentation below will help prepare a pull request that is ready for inclusion with minimal editing.

When a pull request is accepted by the Working Group, an editor will integrate changes. Pull requests and issues that are accepted by the working group will be merged into the source documents and the commenter will receive a notification from GitHub that the pull request was accepted.

Editorial Documentation

Documents in this repository use the Respec preprocessor.

Special Elements and Classes

Role, State, and Property References

The ARIA spec allows easy generation of links to roles, states, and properties, with the right link and styling. Simply enclose the name of the role, state, or property in the following elements:

  • <rref> for roles
  • <sref> for states
  • <pref> for properties

Note: this only works in the ARIA spec. Other specs must use cross references as defined below.

References to Other ARIA Specs

Links with special class attributes allow cross references into other specs in the suite, which are transformed by the script to be the appropriate target for the given publication, so editors' drafts point to other editors' drafts, and TR publications point to other TR publications. This requires some configuration options in the respecConfig and use of special class attributes.

First, for each document that might be referenced, a set of URLs is provided. The URLs are indexed by values of the respec spec status, which ensures the target at the same level of maturity as the current version is used. A typical set of values for the main ARIA spec is:

// Spec URLs
ariaSpecURLs: {
  "FPWD": "http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/",
  "ED": "http://w3c.github.io/aria/aria/aria.html",
  "WD" : "http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/",
  "REC": "http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/"
},

Note that even though some of these URIs are redundant, they must all be defined to work in all circumstances. If a document is a First Public Working Draft but the FPWD variant isn't defined, there won't be a match with the specStatus and the links won't work.

The following properties for cross references are currently available (todo: we should add versions for the other docs):

  • ariaSpecURLs: for the main ARIA spec
  • coreMappingURLs: for the Core AAM
  • accNameURLs: for the AccName AAM
  • htmlMappingURLs: for the HTML AAM
  • dpubModURLs: for DPUB ARIA
  • graphicsModURL: for Graphics ARIA
  • graphicsMappingModURL: for Graphics AAM
  • practicesURL: for Practices

The task of fixing up links is done by a script that needs to be hooked in via the following line in the respecConfig:

preProcess: [ linkCrossReferences ]

Once all this is defined in the respecConfig, use the class attribute on the links to activate the script for that link. The value of the href should be the fragment you want to target, i.e,. the hash tag and fragment ID. For example, a link to the list of roles in the ARIA spec would be:

<a href="#role_definitions" class="specref">ARIA roles</a>

If you want to target the main spec, leave the href blank (but present). If you want other classes on the link, e.g., for styling, provide them after the script-hooking class, for instance class="specref role-reference".

The set of class values currently defined are:

  • role-reference: role definitions
  • state-reference: state definitions
  • property-reference: property definitions
  • specref: other targets in the main ARIA spec
  • core-mapping: the Core AAM
  • html-mapping: the HTML AAM
  • accname: the AccName AAM

Todo: we should add versions for the other docs

References to Other W3C Specs

When referencing other W3C specifications such as HTML and DOM, we can take advantage of ReSpec’s xref feature to automatically generate canonical links in context.

In the text below, for example, xref will automatically convert “[^button^]” into a link to the definition of the <button> element in the HTML spec:

A [^button^] performs an operation when pressed.

When authoring text for the ARIA spec, you can search xref’s collection of exported terms to find the correct syntax for the desired specification. By default, the ARIA spec’s xref configuration will attempt to resolve terms for the following specs:

If you wish to reference a spec that is not included in ARIA’s default xref configuration, you must specify it with a data-cite attribute. For example, the following markup references “nullable type” and “DOMString” from the Web IDL spec:

<section data-cite="webidl">
    <p>
        All ARIA attributes reflect in IDL as [=nullable type|nullable=]
        {{DOMString}} attributes.
    </p>
</section>

In some cases, a term may be defined in multiple specifications with the same xref syntax. For example, “[=range=]” is defined in both the DOM and Internationalization Glossary specs. The data-cite attribute can also be used in these cases to disambiguate and target the intended spec.

For more information, please refer to xref’s auto-linking external references guide.

Shared Resources

The ARIA repositories share a common set of resources to reduce redundancy. Shared resources are in the aria-common repository, and copied to a "common" folder in this and other ARIA repositories. It is important to make edits in the aria-common repository; making edits in the common folder of another repository will allow the edits to be overridden.

Special Structures

Todo: special characteristics table classes etc. used by the script

Editors' Drafts

Official editors' drafts are published to [https://w3c.github.io/aria/]. This URI is suitable for public references. Documents published to that location are static snapshots from the Respec processor. This is to minimize load time for consumers of these drafts. Editors' drafts are automatically updated (if there are no errors) by a Travis-CI service run when commits are pushed to the master branch.

How ARIA Extension Specs are Built

An extension spec is one that defines additional roles, states, and / or properties that augment the collection defined in the core ARIA specification (aria/aria.html). Extension specs must be built in conjunction with the W3C ARIA WG if any new roles are to be in the default vocabulary space (http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab).

When building an extension spec, use the boiler plate provided in aria/template.html as a basis.

Note that this template uses the aria/script/ariaChild.js script. That script knows how to incorporate information from the core ARIA specification into the extension spec so that new roles, states, and properties are well integrated into the overall ARIA taxonomy.

The ariaChild.js script relies upon an input script (aria/script/roleInfo.js). As of today, that file is not automatically generated. If you want to ensure the file is up to date, access the core ARIA spec with the special query string "#saveRoles" from a browser on a client that has write access to the copy of the extension spec you are editing. When the dialog appears, click the save button and tell your browser to save the roleInfo.js file into the aria/script directory.

The scripts to support extension modules are stored in the aria-common repository. Therefore, updates to roleInfo.js must be saved and committed to that repository, even though they are generated from content in this repository.

Style guidelines

Document style

  • There should always be introductory content before starting subsections.
  • Sequences of steps use ordered lists, the first paragraph of which labels the step and is in a <strong>; subsequent block elements are the content for the step.
  • Preformatted examples should "pretty-print" the example to be less than 80 characters wide, and indent the code using 2 space characters per indent step. Wrap within an element tag with an extra indent. Use line break characters, not <br/> elements, for new lines. Add extra line spacing as useful. They use the class "example". Use the Code Sample Expander tool to assist with this.
  • Keyboard characters should be in kbd elements.
    • Spell out keys such as "control", "shift", "command", "option", "alt", "insert", "pageup", "enter", etc.
    • Use plus as delimiter for keys that are pressed together, e.g., control+v
    • Use comma as delimiter for keys that are pressed in sequence, e.g., insert, m
  • Language elements should be in code elements.
  • The first reference in a section to a role or state should be linked to the role or state with the appropriate class. Subsequent references needn't be referenced, but may be in certain circumstances.
  • repeated links to aria features should just be in <code>, not in cross-reference links (just link first time)
  • Headings use title case.
  • "step" headings, the bold sentence at the start of a numbered list item in a list of steps, are sentence case and not marked as an actual hx element. They should summarize what the following paragraphs get into.
  • Subheadings: only use sub-headers (<h{x+1}> following <hx>) if there are at least two of them. If there isn't more than two sub-sections, it isn't a sub-section and should be integrated into the parent section.
  • Lists: only use lists of two or more items. If it's only one item, it isn't a list and should have a different semantic.
  • Terms like "Web" are capitalized when it's "the Web", but not when referring to "web applications". Same for "internet, rich internet applications".
  • Synopsize the meaning of abbreviations and glossary terms the first time they are used in a section.
  • Acronyms we don't expand (but wrap in <abbr> elements):
    • API
  • Acronyms we do expand (don't use the acronym)
    • RIA (use rich internet application)
    • AT (use assistive technology)
  • Cross reference links don't include section numbers.
  • Refer to states and properties in prose as "attributes", not as "states" or "properties" in order to be less confusing. (though they're still formally states or properties)

Preferred terminology

  • When referring to an instance of a role, use "element with a role of X", not "X role" or "X element". "X role" refers to role in the taxonomy itself; "X element" is not technically meaningful.
  • "Assistive technologies" is plural, not singular.
  • Use "WAI-ARIA" instead of "ARIA", to avoid trademark confusion.
  • Use "text alternative" instead of "text equivalent" or the like, for consistency with WCAG 2.0 usage.
  • Reference "DOMClick" instead of "DOMActivate" which is going to be deprecated or made optional.

Specification rules

  • Descendants of the composite role MUST NOT have the "nameFrom" value of "contents" set.
  • The composite role and its descendants MUST NOT have a childrenArePresentational value of "true".

Quality Assurance Checklist

In general, but particularly when preparing documents for TR publication, editors should check the following quality points:

Semi-Automated Checking

There was some automated checking available, previously run by XSLT. This feature may be restored. This report helped determine the following potential issues:

  • When inheritance of roles change, the states they support may change. The tools will indicate when there is a change of supported states by comparison to an earlier version of the spec. It is a manual decision whether the changes are desired or if the set of supported states needs to be updated.
  • Ensure that supported state not defined if the state is also inherited
  • Check that the role spec and the UML Class Diagram express the same thing
  • Roles list only supported states that are defined
  • States indicate applicability only to roles that are defined
  • Roles and states cross reference each other: roles indicate supported states, and those states indicate applicability to those roles; discrepancies called out for manual attention