Infusion 1.3 Accessibility Sprint

[Colin Clark]

Hi everyone,

We're currently in the midst of an accessibility sprint for Infusion, which will form a substantial portion of the new features planned for Infusion 1.3. Here's a quick summary of the improvements we're working on:

 * Refine Inline Edit's use of ARIA to improve its use with a screenreader [Mike and Justin]
 * For the Progress component, work around ARIA progress role bugs in NVDA [Golam and Justin]
 * Port Uploader from Flash to HTML 5, substantially improving its overall accessibility [Colin and a buddy]
 * Provide improved labeling and new, optional interactions for screen reader users in the Reorderer [Michelle and a buddy]
 * Tidy up and implement additional ARIA roles in our demos [Anastasia and buddies]

Infusion 1.3 will also include a number of other exciting features, including:

 * The first official release of the Infusion Builder
 * A new Inversion of Control system for the Infusion framework
 * Transactional support in the ChangeApplier
 * Improved infrastructure for components that use the Renderer

A full list of the issues we're working on for the release is available here:

http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Infusion+1.3+Tasking

The AEGIS Project has offered to help us with AT-based usability tests in November, so our goal is to wind up the accessibility fixes by the end of October so we have time to prepare demos and instructions to testers. Justin hasn't yet set the exact release date, but here's a suggestion off the top of my head:

Bug Parade: October 1
Code Freeze: October 20
Release date: October 28

My rationale for suggesting such a long bug parade phase is that most of the feature-based work for 1.3 is already finished, and we're largely focussed on targeted bug fixes. Thoughts?

Colin

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Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
http://fluidproject.org