WAI-ARIA and Fluid Inline Edit

[Jonathan Hung]

I have been experimenting with ARIA markup in our Fluid Inline Edit
example and testing it in JAWS.

Fluid Inline Edit Example:
http://source.fluidproject.org/svn/fluid/components/tags/fluid-0.4beta1/src/webapp/sample-code/inline-edit/announcements/announcements.html

Short explanation:
For purposes of a demo, using wairole:button on the editable text span
will allow our example to be used with JAWS. wairole:textbox will not
work.

Long explanation:
Joseph and I looked over the WAI-ARIA spec and decided that the role
"textbox" seemed appropriate for an inline editable text block, and
the ARIA state "readonly" be toggled between false and true when in
edit mode on/off.

In the Fluid Inline Edit example, I added "wairole:textbox" to the
span within announcement1. When tested in JAWS the AT is silent when
reaching an inline edit box... it doesn't read out the text in the
span.

Examining Dijit, their code implements the inline edit as a button.
Changing the Fluid example from "wairole:textbox" to "wairole:button"
yields better results - JAWS will read out the announcement, but will
append "button" to the end of the speech. ("Lecture Room Change
button").

Any ARIA experts out there who can shed some light into this?

- Jonathan.

-- 
Jonathan Hung / jonathan.hung at utoronto.ca
University of Toronto - ATRC
Tel: (416) 946-3002