Accessibility Tree details

[dginev]

I am unsure about a sentence in the document, so making an issue to inquire further:

In general, the accessibility tree is a simplified version of the DOM in that only information needed by AT is exposed. For example, a span with no semantic information will not be part of the accessibility tree.

I made a document containing two unmarked spans, and am seeing both Firefox and Chrome include them in the AT tree. See screenshot at the bottom.

I also enabled chrome's Screen Reader (which is the only app i have succeeded with using on linux) and it spoke both spans by default.

So what exactly does "not be part of" mean in the sentence?

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[NSoiffer]

The contents of the span are part of the tree, but not the span itself... or at least that is what the spec says should happen. From https://www.w3.org/TR/core-aam-1.1/#intro_treetypes, "Generally if something can be trimmed out it will be, for reasons of performance and simplicity. For example, a with just a style change and no semantics may not get its own accessible object, but the style change will be exposed by other means."

From your examples, that appears to be what is happening. For MathML, it means that would typically be stripped out, but not the presentation inside it.

[dginev]

Hmm, I see. So maybe a rephrasing of:

"For example, a span with no semantic information will not be preserved in the accessibility tree, only its textual content."

[NSoiffer]

"textual content" is going a bit far because the tags might still be there. The point is that non-semantic tags get thrown out. If you have headers or lists, I think you will see them in the tree. I'll adjust the text so it isn't misleading. Neil

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On Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 8:12 AM Deyan Ginev ***@***.***> wrote: Hmm, I see. So maybe a rephrasing of: "For example, a span with no semantic information will not be preserved in the accessibility tree, only its textual content." — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#13 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AALZM3AWJRG4BGOSMD4U2WLUGL5HHANCNFSM5FYJDYZA> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>.