Add another example for role=region to identify carousel region

[spanchang]

Refer to: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/aria/ARIA20
I am aware there three examples listed but believe adding another (perhaps as the first one) will inculcate a practice for identifying a region clearly labelled as "carousel".
The ARIA Authoring Practices Guide suggests use of aria-roledescription, however a role=region clearly named as a carousel by following ARIA20 is more robust facilitating navigation and discoverability of the carousel.
Screen reader users rely on circumstantial elements in the carousel region to figure out that their focus is inside one, e.g. Next / Previous slide buttons or Pause slideshow button or such.
Often there is a heading for the slide as a banner and it keeps changing and that is another clue.
I do see the statement in the description for ARIA20, "The generic region should be used when the section cannot be marked up using a standard document landmark role (see ARIA11)", yet believe this example is a strong one.
Suggested example:
The home page of a website has two carousels: one under Announcements (an h2 heading) and one under Publications (also an h2 heading).
Both carousels have next / previous buttons and a button that can be pressed to pause/start slideshow.
The div regions that contain each carousel are marked up with role=region and named using aria-label as follows:

... Carousel content

and

... Carousel content

Note: Identifying a carousel region with this technique even when there is only one carousel on the page is also very helpful for users.

Thanks!

[giacomo-petri]

[if the group agree, my response could be replaced with a response only]

I think it could work as a solution, but I'm not very comfortable with using the accessible name of a region to convey the visual representation or behavior of an element solely through the "carousel content".

It's somewhat better if the word "carousel" is only part of the accessible name (e.g., "Announcements carousel"), but even then, it's not ideal in my view.

Personally, I would prefer not to include this example in the list.

[TestPartners]

For components that comprise a collection of elements, such as carousels, accordions, date pickers, image galleries, drag and drop widgets etc., I put a role="group" attribute on the container and apply a unique accessible name that conveys the component's function and identifies the specific instance of the content, such as aria-label="special offers carousel".

I wouldn't usually use role="region", although I wouldn't necessarily object to it. To me, a group is more appropriate for a component that represents a single entity from the user's perspective. By contrast, a region can contain all sorts of stuff like headings, lists, videos, images, text etc. that users will perceive as all being separate items.

I have rarely encountered a situation (if ever) where an "aria-roledescription" attribute worked better than a "role" and "aria-label" attribute.

[spanchang]

Response to above two comments:
Group vs. region: from ARIA specs:
Group role for content :" that is not intended to be included in a page summary or table of contents by assistive technologies.
Contrast with region, which is a grouping of user interface objects that will be included in a page summary or table of contents."
So it is not wrong to use a region role as a container that only has a carousel. There is nothing in the specs that states a region must have a host of different types of elements. Carousel can have images, links, text, etc. contained within slides.

About ARIA-label: it is meant to help blind / low vision users mainly as it is exposed by AT and its value is not available visually. So for a generic section identified as a region, the aria-label works well to convey visual representation or behavior. Sure if it were an element like role=button or role=nav, a different rule will apply to say what the aria-label should contain.
A sighted user can see there is a carousel under a section with heading "Announcements". A blind chap does not know that.
So what is the problem in conveying via an aria-label that it contains a carousel with a qualifier "Announcements" to aid non-sighted users?
By the way, a preceding comment also provides an example of an aria-label ("special offers carousel") for a group role. It also has the word carousel - to indicate "visual representation or behavior". So the notion that aria-label should not convey that is untenable.
A section that is identified with a generic region role is navigable and findable as a landmark region too unlike a group.

[bruce-usab]

If we do example, we might reuse prose from #2339

[spanchang]

@bruce
Did you mean to leave the above comment against this ticket #4500? Sorry I did not understand it.
Thanks
Sailesh

[scottaohara]

a carousel could be a group or a region - potentially even other roles under the appropriate context. I'm not sure how important it is to add this example to the page since it's already not exhaustive of all the potential use cases for region...

[spanchang]

Thanks for agreeing that region role can be applied to a carousel region. I see you have no objection other than observing that the examples do not exhaust all situations where region role may be employed. Sure "And examples following most techniques also do not claim to exhaust all possible uses for a technique. And that is surely not my goal in requesting the inclusion of this example.
My objective is stated in the request up top. Carousels are very common on many home pages and non-sighted users do not realize one is present especially because of poor accessibility markup. Including this example will help educate developers that using a region role with an aria-label is a helpful method for conveying that a carousel is present. Again, it is mainly to help non-sighted users. I trust you do not object to that.
I request you to state specific situations if any for carousels where the role makes sense - that can be included as a note to the proposed example.
As for the other point you make: a different role can be employed in appropriate contexts - again, no disagreements there.
If fact WCAG techniques do not claim that a particular technique is the only way for meeting an SC and state other methods may be employed.
Thanks

[alastc]

Suggested response:

---

ARIA20 is a very general technique, but the carousel is a very specific example.

There are already good patterns such as the APG carousel, which are better examples.

Overall, we do not see sufficient benefit to adding this specific example.