Issues for SC 1.3.6 Identify Purpose

[jake-abma]

Success Criterion 1.3.6 Identify Purpose

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In the Understanding doc it says:

This success criteria requires the author to add the context, propose, and meaning of symbols, regions, buttons, links, and fields so that user agents knows what they do and can adapt them to make them understandable for the user.

In the normative text I only read the "purpose" is required not the "context and meaning". So, OR purpose, context and meaning in this case means exactly the same (and mentioning all three makes it more blurry and one will be sufficient) OR only purpose is required according to the normative text NOT the others in which the text must be re-written.

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In the Understanding doc it says:

... requires ... and meaning of symbols

A symbol may mean different things, like phrases, emblem, pattern, badge, logo etc. and also icons.
So when a symbol is more than only an icon and in the normative text we only speak of icons, this must be changed in the Understanding doc.

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Sufficient Technique

As the role region of WAI ARIA "requires" a purpose we can add another sufficient technique using the region role.

"Authors MUST give each element with role region a brief label that describes the purpose of the content in the region."

https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#region

Interesting fact here is that we don't provide a "complete list of all purposes in the world" so do wonder how UA or AT might subtract a self-made purpose required from normative WAI ARIA spec.

[detlevhfischer]

context, propose, and meaning

The understanding text really has "propose" instead of purpose, so this typo should be changed ASAP.

@jake-abma I agree, I would suggest to drop 'context' and 'meaning' and home in on purpose to make the Unterstanding text align better with the SC text. It adds imorecision and might also be seen as inviting athours to overload elements.

requires ... and meaning of symbols

Again, I agree it will be easier to focus on icons (there is as far as I know no normative definition of icon, so even a little landscape sketch with an American-style postbox would quality as long as it is used as the metaphoric visual for a particular control (e.g. mail address).

No thoughts on the last point...

[jake-abma]

@marcjohlic shall we take action on this one?

[mbgower]

I took a shot at a first update to this Understanding document. Some of your comments seemed already to be resolved (i.e., I couldn't find what you were talking about). This could use a few more passes, but I think it is an improvement: #842

[mbgower]

@jake-abma and @detlevhfischer I added you as reviewers on the PR

[mbgower]

The PR was implemented.