Aaron Leventhal wrote:
James Graham wrote:
Dave Hodder wrote:
The current HTML 5 draft doesn't mention ARIA anywhere. Perhaps it
should clarify the relationship (or non-relationship as it is at
present), even if it's only a brief mention in section 1.1.
Unfortunately a brief mention is insufficient as aria functionality
overlaps substantially with HTML functionality and so processing
requirements for aria-in-html need to be carefully considered (so we can
answer questions like "how does <div aria-role='heading'> affect the
outline algorithm"). This has not yet happened.
Okay, so I can speak to this. I developed first browser implementation
of ARIA -- the one in Firefox.
ARIA doesn't really overlap with HTML, because ARIA only reports what a
JS developer is using elements for.
So ARIA semantics should not affect behavior. Any code for dealing with
ARIA markup should be strictly in the accessibility API support code
(MSAA/IAccessible2/ATK/AT-SPI/UI Automation/Universal Access).
This seems like a poor idea from the point of view of authors actually
using the markup correctly as they will have to use special
accessibility-API aware tools to inspect the effects of their aria-* markup.
A div need not affect the outline algorithm, etc. any more than a div does.
Thus it should not be complicated to mention ARIA in the spec.
So, given markup like:
<section>
<h1>foo</h1>
<div aria-role='heading'>bar</div>
</section>
would AT questioned on what the headings and subheadings of the
<section> are report on the <h1> alone (as specified by the current
outline algorithm)?
Similarly, if I have a table like:
<tr><th id="a">1</th><th id="b">2</th></tr>
<tr><td>A</td><td aria-describedby="a">B</td></tr>
would AT report the cell headings for B as 2, not 1, despite the
aria-describedby attribute?
If the aria-* attributes overrule the HTML-native algorithms then aria
creates an odd (and IMHO unpleasant) situation in which a document's
semantics depend on the type of client being used to view it.
What's the easiest way to test existing aria implementations on
Mac/Linux (I don't have access to a Windows box)?
--
"Mixed up signals
Bullet train
People snuffed out in the brutal rain"
--Conner Oberst
