[ariaNotify] avoid pestering/annoyance of notifications, either too many or too irrelevant

[cookiecrook]

Moved at @alisonmaher's request from:

• ARIA Notification Proposal Discussion Points #1958 (comment)

AriaNotify should avoid pestering/annoyance of notifications, either too many or too irrelevant

I understand many aspects of the ariaNotify proposal (types, notification IDs, element-scopes, priority, division of critical vs interruptible text) are intended to reduce the annoyance of live regions and allow some level of verbosity or relevance control, particularly in the scenarios where irresponsible misuse equates to the level of abuse.

However, I also see a primary goal of the API to be “simpler,” easier to use than Live Regions, etc, which could lead us (even with the best of intentions) to an even-more abusable API for speech and braille announcements.

What follows is a list of known severe misuse scenarios that have proven annoying to screen reader users, so annoying that Apple engineers have implemented VoiceOver prefs to shut off live region notifications entirely. We’d like to provide a path to give users incentives to enable some types of helpful notifications while also giving them sufficient control to disallow abusive misuse, but the live regions API is vague enough that it’s differentiate these unwanted notifications from genuinely useful notifications.

Examples of misuse/abuse of Live Regions that should be disincentivized with a new API

• live regions in advertising containers announcing irrelevant or unwanted content
• timers or progress indicators using polite or assertive notifications, rather than “off”
• extra chatty “log” containers, particularly that conflict with the primary content… For example, a social media live stream (Twitch, Instagram, etc) that displays excessive amounts of “likes” or comments, such that the main audio is trampled by live regions notifications

Specific examples:

• This Texas Monthly article misuses an assertive live region to count down an ad, making the webpage unusable.
• Numerous examples of custom audio and video players on the web have added role=status to the timecode element (0:42) which updates every second, making the video and other page content unusable.

Miscellaneous musings of how to address these and other misuse scenarios.

• Some ideas already mentioned in the ariaNotify discussion thread (types, notification IDs, element scoping, priority, division of critical vs interruptible text, etc.) would allow more granular control by the web engine or downstream AT
• “ignore ongoing notifications from [this labeled control] or [from the site altogether]” similar to social media site (Slack, etc) features for “mute notifications for this thread”
• Disallow some usage (perhaps disallowing simple notifications) fired on major elements (document, body, main?) without more clarifying information like a notification ID, type, or other scoping metadata.
• Require UAs to log errors, warnings, or debug messages to the browser console for certain excessive intervals.
• Some implementors may object entirely to extra error or warning logging, and specifics of these intervals would be arguable, so perhaps test the extreme cases and leave intermediate triggers as an implementation detail?
• As an extreme case, any quickly repeated notification without a proper timer role or percentage scope (less than 1s) could be considered an error, as most of the speech notifications would be trampled before completion.
• Perhaps also number of notifications within some time period (5 times within 20s?) could be considered a warning.
• Debug logging (including use-presented string) for all AT notifications (including Live Regions and the Web Speech API utterances), so excessive examples could be caught by QA for the site?
• User prompt (non-blocking) on first attempt (similar to privacy APIs for location API and default browser notifications) allowing user to allow or disallow AT notifications
• Is so, how much should be in the browser, and how much in the AT?
• If user has previously disallowed notifications (or live regions) at the system level, this could be a gentle way to alert them that “this site, which you use daily, might not be misusing live regions like those other sites that caused to to disable them outright.”

[alisonmaher]

Porting over my previous comment:

@cookiecrook Given that this would also apply to live regions, as well, and not just ariaNotify, should we open a general issue to discuss/explore this more broadly. Not sure where such an issue should live, but I do really like your idea around having some sort of DevTools logging to bubble such cases up to authors.

[Alexectramagneta]

concerned who be it may firstly would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused
also for putting halts on any foreign trade that may have been implicated is there a way for this to be mended and the resolution to the initial problem of language barriers vs communication/breakdowns be incorporated as a coding native turns out the string of relativity theory and the magnetism of language's is written in the genetic coding i would like to add that i didn't mean to add a bot last night either nor to halt any military personnel from there normal duties please advise if its best for me to seek some legal advice if ive affected anything to that kind of extent or maybe we can arrange a meeting to if thats is needed

first concern in the motion problem are the forces that bodies exert on one another. This leads to the study of such topics as gravity, electricity, and magnetism, according to the nature of the forces involved. Given the forces, one can seek the manner in which bodies move under the action of forces; this is the subject matter of mechanics proper. Related Topics: fluid mechanics mechanics of solids quantum mechanics celestial mechanics relativistic mechanicsIn more technical terms, assuming the axiom of countable choice, a set is countable if its cardinality (the number of elements of the set) is not greater than that of the natural numbers. A countable set that is not finite is said to be countably infinite.

proved the existence of uncountable sets, that is, sets that are not countable; for example the set of the having just cause for something;
justifiable:
righteous indignation at being accused falsely.
of or relating to an upright, proper, or moral way of life; [real numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_[Synonyms for righteous include:](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=fa1afa555319f93454884da36e9e07d5572021da78a3db24e08696b2f1889e2bJmltdHM9MTc0MzEyMDAwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=205bf14a-7d0e-69f7-0fd4-e2b37c546830&psq=righteous+synonym&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubWVycmlhbS13ZWJzdGVyLmNvbS90aGVzYXVydXMvcmlnaHRlb3Vz&ntb=1)
The Standard Elocutionist appeared in 168 British editions and sold over 250,000 copies in the United States alone. It explains methods to instruct deaf-mutes (as they were then known) to articulate words and read other people's lip movements to decipher meaning. Bell's father taught him and his brothers not only to write Visible Speech but to identify any symbol and its accompanying sound.[25] Bell became so proficient that he became a part of his father's public demonstrations and astounded audiences with his abilities. He could decipher Visible Speech representing virtually every language, including Latin, Scottish Gaelic, and even Sanskrit, accurately reciting written tracts without any prior knowledge of their pronunciation.[25]