RE: Over-riding Native Semantics (seeking clarification)

I think the issue is similar to aria-disabled attribute and the disabled property on some form controls.

When the two values are in conflict who wins?

I believe the thinking is that HTML colspan and rowspan attributes change the rendering of content, where as aria-colspan and aria-rowspan only describe features of the table, so if the values of these two attributes are in conflict it is HTML colspan and rowspan will determine the changes in the rendering of the table.

Maybe aria-colspan and aria-rolspan should not be allowed on TH and TD elements, authors should only use the native semantics.
Jon


From: Aaron Leventhal <aleventhal@google.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 12:47 PM
To: John Foliot <john.foliot@deque.com>
Cc: ARIA <public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Over-riding Native Semantics (seeking clarification)

+1 that's inconsistent. Perhaps accidental?

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 10:32 AM John Foliot <john.foliot@deque.com<mailto:john.foliot@deque.com>> wrote:
Greetings ARIA WG,

Recently, I was made aware of two claims made in the ARIA 1.1 specification which caused me to question the statements. Specifically, the current spec, when speaking about aria-rowspan and aria-colspan, states:
If aria-rowspan is used on an element for which the host language provides an equivalent attribute, user agents<https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#dfn-user-agent> MUST ignore the value of aria-rowspan and instead expose the value of the host language's attribute to assistive technologies<https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#dfn-assistive-technology>.
(Note: I am quoting the aria-rowspan text, but it states the same for aria-colspan as well)
Is there an explanation/reason why these two attributes operate differently than most aria attributes & values, which normally over-ride Native Semantics? I must confess I was surprised when I was pointed to this discrepancy regarding ARIA's semantics in these cases, up to and including questioning whether this is an editorial misunderstanding.

Thanks in advance for any clarity the WG can provide.

JF



--
John Foliot | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com<http://deque.com/>