On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:36:53 +0200, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Matthew Raymond wrote:
So [snip]ping lots of stuff that is kinda interesting but not in a very
relevant way.
The language of the |role| specification is actually unclear. The
intro indicates that |role| can be used to "describe the semantic
meaning" of elements, while Section 3 says the following:
"It is used by applications and assistive technologies to determine
the purpose of UI widgets."
OK, I think I hadn't appreciated just how vague the W3C document is. I
propose we standardise the following:
A role attribute which may appear on (only non-semantic?) elements to
indicate that that element is part of a DHTML widget and not marked-up
prose. The role attribute would not be namespaced (in HTML5, in
XHTML5... well who knows). The role attribute would take certain
predefined values (not those on the W3C page which are largely useless,
e.g. banner, or otherwise covered in HTML5, e.g. navlist) corresponding
to the various types of UI widgets understood by the accessibility
toolkits. As far as possible we would stick to whatever Firefox
currently implements, but we would simplify the syntax where necessary
(e.g. avoid qnames wherever possible). Values outside the predefined
list would make the document non-conforming.
Does that sound reasonable or have I totally missed the point?
About right except there is a mechanism in the W3C work for adding new
values, which don't make it non-conforming. Given that people are pretty
inventive, I think that is quite valuable. YMMV
And it can appear on any element, although there is not much point adding
it to things that use well-defined semantics already.
cheers
Chaals
--
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
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