Feature: Braille only regions for student testing

[aleventhal]

Some testing services use a nonstandard attribute called brailleonlyregion. When JAWS sees this attribute, it will output the region in Braille, but not as text to speech.
Purpose: test someone's ability to read text aloud, without having the screen reader tell them how to do it.

Obviously, not ever screen reader user reads Braille, but apparently Pearson, ETS, Cambium and others have found value in this.

As we are pushing away from supporting any nonstandard attributes (screen readers can currently consume attributes directly via ISimpleDOMNode), we need a standards-based way to provide the same feature.

[cookiecrook]

@mhakkinen Would you or someone else at ETS be able to write the explainer? Doesn't have to be long... Just outline the need, and explain why existing mechanisms (aria-label="masked for test" aria-braillelabel="braille this text") don't provide sufficient utility. Thanks.

[spectranaut]

Minutes from last weeks meeting: https://www.w3.org/2024/10/17-aria-minutes#964a

[aleventhal]

Does anyone know somebody from a testing service who might be able to answer this? @cookiecrook, do you have another way to reach out to @mhakkinen?