ARIA Validator Beta - Chrome Extension

[Rick Brown]

Thought members here might be interested in a new util I have just released to validate ARIA implementation in HTML pages:

ARIA Validator - available as a Chrome extension in the Chrome Web Store for the rather low price of "free".

It's still in beta but I find it quite helpful and I hope you do too.

For example install it and then try it on these pages:

 

http://oaa-accessibility.org/example/9/

http://test.cita.illinois.edu/aria/alertdialog/alertdialog1.php

Rick

[Marco Zehe]

Hi Rick,

Great idea!

out of curiosity: Are you planning to make this available to other browsers like Firefox, too?

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Marco

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[Rick Brown]

Hi Marco

I'll definitely do a Firefox extension if the Chrome version proves worthwhile and helpful to people.

For IE am considering a Bookmarklet version that bootstraps the code from a CDN or similar.

Hope you find it useful.
Rick

[Mario Batusic]

Hi Rick,

Thanks a lot for the extension. We at Fabasoft make our cloud products fully accessible (ARIA + keyboard support). The newist one is our Fabasoft cloud: http://cloud.fabasoft.com
I have two questions:
* Could you provide the validator as a Javascript library? It would be a big help for our Javascript developers during the engeneering.
* I test the validator in detail by testing our product. If you are interested I could help you by listing the found validator defects. Where would be the right place therefore?
Thanks in advance.
Ciao Mario

[Rick Brown]

Hi Mario

Yes, the validator can definitely be used as a javascript library, that was actually my original intention when I wrote the first draft of it over three years ago. The Chrome extension was just the easiest way for me to get it out there. 

The best place to get the JS library and to post defects is the project page but before I post a link to it I'd like to deliver some significant changes (new validation checks) I have nearly finished and do a bit of cleanup. I'm also toying with the idea of making the underlying JS library into AMD Modules.

I have a lot of other things on at the moment but hope to have it all ready in about a week - hope that suits.

Rick

[Mario Batusic]

Am 24.07.2014 um 03:05 schrieb Rick Brown <mal...@gmail.com>:
Hi Rick

This is a wonderful message from you. It will be nice to have your library for testing it so soon. Thanks a lot in advance.

Ciao     Mario

[Victor Tsaran]

Hi Rick.

I was under impression that Google Developer Accessibility Tools were performing some ARIA validation as well. Did you have a chance to cross-check with your work?

Thanks for the extension. I am going to put it to use right away!

Best,

Victor

[Victor Tsaran]

Hi Rick.

Just tried running your ARIA Validator with a screen reader. After pressing ENTER on the "ARIA Validator" button, where do I find the results of the validation?

Thanks,

Victor

[Rick Brown]

Hi Victor

You have to reload any tabs you already had open before installing the extension. Probably something I am doing wrong and should fix. The results should open in a new tab.

[Rick Brown]

Hi Victor
I did not know about that, thanks I'll take a look and cross check.

I'll post back if I find anything noteworthy in the comparison.
Cheers
Rick

[Rick Brown]

I took a look at the "Google Developer Accessibility Tools", fantastic tool, thanks for the tip Victor. I'm going to put that to use.

It doesn't seem to do ARIA validation - I gave it a very simple test:

This page has "aria-labeledby" on an alertdialog: http://test.cita.illinois.edu/aria/alertdialog/alertdialog1.php

The Google tools did not detect the error (it should be "aria-labelledby" with two 'l's).

Even if it did ARIA Validation another difference is that the ARIA Validator I have written is not 'Chrome Centric' - it is actually a javascript library first and a Chrome Extension second.

The project page with source code and reusable JS libraries is here: https://code.google.com/p/aria-toolkit/

FYI the validator now handles implicit semantics.

[Shawn Lauriat]

Rick,

The Accessibility Developer Tools extension does do ARIA validation, but more along the lines of states for a particular role or aria-labelledby pointing at an invalid ID, that sort of thing, rather than common misspellings of attributes. Coincidentally (great minds think alike?), it also has a separate repository for the reusable JavaScript audit rule library, independent of the extension itself (also open source).

Regards,

Shawn

[Alice Boxhall]

Hi Rick et al,

As Shawn said, the Accessibility Developer Tools extension does not currently check for misspellings of ARIA attributes, but it does check for non-existent roles.

I took a quick look at your code, and it actually looks like you check for a lot of things that aren't checked in Accessibility Developer Tools (as well as a few things that are). If you'd consider merging this code into the Accessibility Developer Tools library I'd be really excited to work with you on pulling things in; alternatively, I'll consider it a list of implicit feature requests :)

Thanks,

Alice

[Rick Brown]

Hi Alice, Shawn and others.

That's a great idea - let's do it. What did you have in mind? Did you want me to do the dev and create pull requests or did you want to port it over yourself or a bit of both?

I'll send you a direct email with a high level explanation of the aria-toolkit fundamentals.

Rick

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[Dominic Mazzoni]

Two things:

1. Rick, I'm glad to hear you'd be interested in joining forces and helping us enhance the Accessibility Developer Tools! More comprehensive ARIA validation is definitely a great idea and it'd be great to collaborate.

2. Alice and Rick, what do you think about adding warnings for some things that are allowed by ARIA but problematic in practice? Two patterns come to mind that I see quite often, and they might work by chance in some browser and screen reader combinations but will break in several.

* Composite ARIA roles where the required owned children are descendants but not direct children (and not explicitly fixed via aria-owns or role=presentation), for example:

<div role="listbox">

  <p>

    <div role="option">Item 1</div>

  </p>

  <p>

    <div role="option">Item 2</div>

  </p>

</div>

* Similarly, a composite ARIA role that has focusable controls within the required owned child, for example:

<div role="listbox">

  <div role="option">

    Item 1

    <button>Action on Item 1
  </div>

</div>

[Rick Brown]

Hi Free ARIA group.

This is a follow-up/courtesy to let users of the "ARIA Validator" know that I am abandoning that project, but definitely not abandoning them. The validator should continue to work but I won't be releasing any new versions. As discussed below, the goals of "Google Developer Accessibility Tools" and "ARIA Validator" projects are very similar and it is better for everyone if we collaborate. I have joined that team and will initially focus on porting features over to it and hope to continue working on it beyond that and into the future.

Dominic thanks for your suggestions below - for my part I will certainly be interested to consider this scenario once I have got over the initial porting exercise from aria-toolkit to accessibility-developer-tools.

Victor - thanks for letting me know about accessibility-developer-tools - I would have kept going in parallel if you hadn't said anything.

Alice - thanks for having me on the team, it's been awesome so far.

[Pratik Patel]

I am very happy to see this collaboration. Please let us know if you need us to create test cases and or hammer on builds to provide feedback. The EZFire team can help as needed.

Regards,

 

Pratik

 

 

 

Pratik Patel

Founder and CEO, EZFire

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[Victor Tsaran]

Hi Rick.

What a fabulous outcome! Great to see that you will be contributing to the Google Accessibility Developer Tools.

On a slightly different topic... I would love to see the Accessibility Developer Tools extension to become a bit more accessible itself. :)

So, put in a word for us, Rick, please! :)