Are ARIA and the ARIA patterns only for blind users?

[JAWS-test]

ARIA as a language and the ARIA patterns work well for blind users.

But what about the other user groups, e.g. visually impaired, motor and cognitively impaired users, who use e.g. speech input and speech output. Suddenly, it doesn't work so well there anymore:

• for the toolbar, the voice command "Press Button Text Align Left" would not work, because it looks like a button, but it is a radio button.
• with the speech output (e.g. with screen magnifier) the triangle icons of the tree only outputs "Graphic", but without label, state and role (they are buttons to open and close subordinate treeitems, so they have the state expanded or not) - see https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/issues/2577
• there is no speech output for the triangle icons of the Select-Only Combobox but for the all other comboboxes, although with the native HTML element there would be no output in either case
• For tabs with secondary actions, the "x" icon for deleting the tab would not be allowed to have a role and label (according to the ARIA specification), but this results in them not being accessible by speech input nor correctly perceivable by speech output

There would be many other examples, but the 4 may suffice to outline the problem. I unfortunately don't have a solution for the problem, but find the situation unsatisfactory and that's why I wanted to bring it up for discussion.

[a11ydoer]

Two resolutions from ARIA APG meeting on Feb 7, 2023

1. APG will add speech input and output information to read me first page where Browser and AT support and Mobile Touch Support info exist. @mcking65
2. Regarding tree example update, the discussion of "aria-action" is still ongoing. APG TF will wait for the decision by ARIA WG. @jnurthen

[JAWS-test]

One solution for a part of the above problems that I can think of would be as follows:

• Elements that should not be output during keyboard operation (e.g. during TAB navigation and linear reading with the virtual cursor) can be marked with aria-hidden=true as before.
• However, the elements within aria-hidden=true can be given the correct role and label so that they can be output by the screen reader when hovered over with the mouse and would be accessible for speech output and speech input

If this is a reasonable concept, the specification for aria-hidden would need to be adapted and then the assistive device manufacturers approached to adapt their assistive devices accordingly