Apple Webkit Gets Serious About WAI-ARIA (on Mac)

September 28, 2009Development

A check of the support for WAI-ARIA roles in the latest Webkit Nightly builds, reveals a major improvement for WAI-ARIA role support on the Mac version of Webkit (an open source web browser engine), but the Windows version shows little progress.

Mac Webkit nightly builds now support more than 60% of the ARIA roles, up from 25% a few months ago. Improved support includes all ARIA landmark roles and many document structure roles.

WAI-ARIA has 59 possible role values (excluding abstract roles):

Mac Support

  • Webkit Nightly 26/09/09 on Mac exposes 39 role values correctly via The Mac accessibility API.
  • Safari 4.0 on Mac exposes 17 role values correctly via The Mac accessibility API
  • Safari 4 Beta on Mac exposes 15 role values correctly via The Mac accessibility API

Windows Support

  • Webkit Nightly 23/09/09 on Windows exposes 10 role values correctly via MSAA.
  • Safari 4.0 on Windows exposes 8 role values via MSAA
  • Safari 4 Beta on Windows exposes 8 role values via MSAA

Detailed results: ARIA role tests on Mac and Windows – Webkit Nightly builds, Safari 4.0 & Safari 4 beta.

Categories: Development

About Steve Faulkner

Steve was the Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi before he left in October 2023. He joined TPGi in 2006 and was previously a Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at vision australia. Steve is a member of several groups, including the W3C Web Platforms Working Group and the W3C ARIA Working Group. He is an editor of several specifications at the W3C including ARIA in HTML and HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0. He also develops and maintains HTML5accessibility and the JAWS bug tracker/standards support.

Comments

Marco Zehe says:
September 28, 2009 at 3:56 am

Thanks for testing this, Steve! Great to hear that Webkit is gearing up in WAI-ARIA!