User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 Firefox/2.0.0.8 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 Firefox/2.0.0.8 The exposed description of a tree item is used for store tree-related information (e.g. depth, number of child nodes, etc.). This blocks out any custom descriptions attached using (for example) ARIA 'describedby' properties. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Consider the following example: <h1><span id="treeDescription" role="wairole:description">TV program Categories</span></h1> <ul tabindex="0" class="axsTree" role="wairole:tree" aria-describedby="treeDescription"> <li tabindex="0" role="wairole:treeitem" aria-describedby="programDescription1">Discussion</li> <li tabindex="0" role="wairole:treeitem">Sitcoms</li> <li tabindex="0" role="wairole:treeitem">Reality</li> <li tabindex="0" role="wairole:treeitem">Drama</li> </ul> <p> description for discussion programs: <span id="programDescription1">Topics range from human interest to politics</span> </p> 2. Look at the exposed description for the first treeitem element in MSAA Actual Results: The manually attached description is not exposed. Expected Results: the manually attached description should be exposed. This can be fixed using IAccessible2: The groupPosition() lets us expose the level, position in set and setsize of a given node. That frees up the description field to be used for what it was originally intended.

Hans, can you attach a testcase as an actual .html file? We have this working in the Mozilla and Dojo tree views: Mozilla -- http://www.mozilla.org/access/dhtml/tree Dojo -- http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/dijit/tests/test_Tree.html Have you determined what the difference is? BTW (unrelated) it looks a bit odd to have tabindex="0" on each item in the tree. That would be each item in the tab order. Usually that's not how it works, you tab to the last focused item in the tree and use arrow keys to navigate within the tree.

We prefer to expose MSAA description that contains group attribute information (http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/accessible/src/msaa/nsAccessibleWrap.cpp#435). It sounds like it's intentional.

Closing as wontfix (invalid seems unfair). I will follow up with ARIA BPG. Today on IRC: davidb: HansHillen, heya, do you know if bug 402105 is still wanted? HansHillen: I don't know, it seems this is intented behavior. davidb: there is the precedence problem. davidb: HansHillen: do you know how IE does it? HansHillen: IE doesn't show the description either davidb: HansHillen: it seems we should close as a wontfix, but i'll have to follow up with the aria best practices guide. davidb: HansHillen: are you okay with a wontfix? HansHillen: yes wontfix is ok, I don't have a specific want for it at the moment davidb: ok thanks