On 10 Aug 2008, at 11:53, James Jeffery wrote:
Progressive enhancement and accessibility. Hmmm. I am not sure about
this, I thought accessibility was about providing access to websites
from all angles, not progressivly enhancing access to users with
more up to date technology or browsers.
Would it not be better to include ARIA markup in HTML5 rather than
trying to adapt it to the current version of HTML? Don't get me
wrong, I love the idea of ARIA.
In an ideal world yes, but HTML5 is years away, and not ready for
authors to start using in the wild yet. HTML4 and XHTML1 are the here
and now. WAI_ARIA was retrofitted from XHTML2 (I believe) to HTML so
that it could be used right away. All major browser vendors support
it now, once IE8 comes out. That means people with disabilities will
start seeing the benefits now, instead of many years down the line.
I'm not on the HTML5 group or follow it as closely as I'd like, but I
don't see too many reasons why many of the roles used in WAI-ARIA wont
be added as elements in HTML5, or at least WAI-ARIA becoming part of
that spec.
It just seems like another quick fix to plug the current problems. I
can't imagine ARIA markup being used all that much anyway (I will
use it, but I am talking about the majority of other developers).
One of the reasons is because the majority of poor developers out
there cannot be bothered to learn anything new and don't give a hoot
about accessibility. The state of the web at the moment in terms of
accessibility is poor anyway.
This shouldn't be as big a problem as it seems on the surface, because
library vendors have already, or are in the process of adding it to
their libraries. Developers will get it for free when they use off
the shelf components, such as provided by Dojo, YUI etc. I would
guess the poor developers you speak of would rather take a pre-written
slider (for example) than write their own from scratch.
I was speaking with a top PHP developer not so long back. He works
for a company and is on serious money, and even he little idea about
accessibility on the web. I think before we start implementing new
ideas we need to inform the the current and the up and coming
developers about accessibility.
Education is really important, but that applies to all web
technologies, not just WAI-ARIA. This is one of the reasons why Opera
commissioned the Web Standards Curriculum, and a recent article on WAI-
ARIA. You can check out both on dev.opera.com.
Its not my place to say what should and what shouldn't happen on the
web, these are just my views. It kind of reminds me of microformats.
A brilliant idea but underused by developers.
I am just going to carry on learning, and hope that the ARIA reaches
its goals and targets and doesn't get brushed under the carpet.
I'm hopeful because of the early adoption by both browser and library
vendors that it will be adopted. Even if it is just used by the likes
of Google to make its map controls accessible then that will be a
small win. Because of the way it was designed it is possible to
retrofit previously inaccessible sites to make them more accessible.
James
On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Laura Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
What about browsers that don't support ARIA markup?
Graceful degradation (if the page is well written).
Or progressive enhancement.
Some references:
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/javascript#access
A good intro to WAI ARIA by Gez Lemon:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introduction-to-wai-aria/
Best Regards,
Laura
___________________________________________
Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
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David Storey
Chief Web Opener,
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Consumer Product Management & Developer Relations
Opera Software ASA
Oslo, Norway
Mobile: +47 94 22 02 32
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