Re: [orca-list] Why I am asking about menu item position and group size

[_mallory <stommepoes stommepoes nl>]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 04:36:48PM -0400, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> However, that isn't what you replied. From your reply, my conclusion is
> that I shouldn't remove that hack. But leaving that hack in place puts
> me in an interesting position: A couple of years ago, if there was some
> property or behavior like posinset and setsize that struck me as wrong,
> I had no problem with failing to respect it -- like what is being done
> in Orca now with menus. But Igalia (my company) became a W3C member at
> the end of 2013. And I became an ARIA spec co-editor in 2014. So it
> would be, ahem, awkward for me to just say I disagree with these W3C
> ARIA spec properties and am therefore ignoring them in Orca. <smiles>
> Furthermore, there is a very strong desire in the web community (web
> developers, companies with web apps, etc.) to be able to have their
> applications work more or less the same regardless of platform or screen
> reader being used. And I do agree completely with that desire. So....

Sometimes the standards community decides things for users that causes
heartache, pain, the wailing of demon orphans and the gnashing of
teeth. It's not like W3C members are actually user-testing any new
stuff on real people: a lot of the aria stuff seems to be being ported
directly from desktop (when it comes to keyboard interactions for 
desktoppy things that are new on the web, like tab-panel interfaces
etc), with the assumption that people will "just know". Meaning lots
of people going onto blogs asking questions like "Where can I learn
how to interact with this aria stuff?" and generally getting no
answer or told to transform into a developer <grin> so they can
figure out how to read the specs.

So the awkwardness of your position makes sense but keep in mind
it's not necessarily wrong and we are building new things for
current living breathing humans using computers. 

It can also just be that like all humans, we hate change. Not because
we're obstinate, but because it means investing time re-learning
stuff we already spent time learning before, to do the same things
we were already doing (not shiny new things we couldn't do before).

Also, on the WebAIM mailing list I remember some big player having
issues recently with posinset and someone was removing it from a
demo (temporarily) until that was settled, so maybe this particular
area is still pretty fluid.

_mallory