A way to specify labelledby/describedy without requiring an id about accname HOT 4 CLOSED

While something like this would impact the accname spec it would fit in aria not accname. Any proposals which need new attributes would be better logged in the aria repository.
However, I think we are unlikely to go down this path as it would add more complexity to something that is already complex enough.

That being said we are looking at a few other possibilities for labeling. The current editors draft has 2 new ways of labeling a limited number of roles - see http://w3c.github.io/aria/#namecalculation and look for encapsulation and legend. Note that (a) this is not applicable across all roles and (b) it is not implemented anywhere yet.

from accname.

I'm reading that as:

• a direct descendant with role=label does the equivalent of aria-labelledby
• a direct descendant with role=legend does the equivalent of aria-describedby

And hence I could write

<article>
  <div role=label><h2>Name of article</h2></div>
  <div role=legend>Description of article</div>
  stuff
</article>

instead of

<article aria-labelledby=label aria-describedby=legend>
  <div id=label><h2>Name of article</h2></div>
  <div id=legend>Description of article</div>
  stuff
</article>

Is that correct? If so, that would certainly be good enough for me and I look forward to years of grousing about how no one supports it yet.

from accname.

@jimmyfrasche No. This will only be allowed for certain roles which support these. Generally label will only work for widgets (like in HTML LABEL) and Legend for groups (like HTML fieldset).
There is also a proposal to allow a descendent Header to label something but it isn't advanced. See https://github.com/w3c/aria/issues/899 for more details although the minutes of the F2F meeting this week aren't yet in the issue.

from accname.

That's too bad. This only really presents an issue for stuff like article. Coming up with id's for forms isn't as fraught. It looks like the linked issue is the best place to discuss this further. Thank you for your time and help.

from accname.