HTML5 Accessibility – September 2012

HTML5Accessibility.com has been updated to reflect HTML5 accessibility support in the latest browser versions.

FireFox and Safari still lead the pack

I have completed another round of testing of HTML5 accessibility support in browsers on Mac and Windows. FireFox on Windows and Safari on Mac OSX still have continue to hold very solid leads on the other browsers tested. Chrome and Internet Explorer on Windows have made improvements in their support in the latest version, but are still under 50%:

Internet Explorer suffers and Chrome lags

Internet Explorer suffers because it does not implement any accessibility semantics for structural elements such as article and aside. It’s a mystery why the default implict ARIA semantics are not being conveyed via UI autumation in IE10 for elements that have no native UI automation roles? Its accessibility implementation of new HTML5 controls and audio and video elements meanwhile, is very good! Refer to Notes on HTML5 accessibility support in IE 10 for more details.

FireFox has caught up with IE in terms of canvas accessibility support. Chrome has started to implement canvas element sub-DOM accessibility support, but its limited to keyboard operability at this time, no semantics of the sub-DOM are exposed. Chrome’s mainstream HTML5 implementation continues to outstrip its accessibility support implementation on both Mac and Windows, it appears that Google are not committing enough resources to implementing accessibility in chrome…

Support information for Opera on Windows and Mac and Safari on Windows is not be updated as there appears to be no active effort to implement accessibility in these browsers.

Categories: Technical

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.