[Bug 12243] Warn when ARIA-describedby/-labelledby points to interactive/form associated content

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12243

--- Comment #5 from Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> 2011-03-22 18:19:16 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #2)

Through some off-bugzilla debate, I believe I have some better answers:

> As comment 0 states, even the people on the HTML WG (me included) made the
> mistake of thinking that this was allowed. Given that the vast majority of the
> documents on the web does not pass a HTML validator without errors, I think we
> can safely assume adding another error to the validation will leave a vast
> majority of documents unaffected.

The basis for this bug is the the assumption that idrefs of anchor elements
will be *especially*  useless to use inside aria-describedby. Texts like 
"please visit this page" are hardly useful as description of anything  inside
the page within which the link is situated.

So the bug report is not based on the belief that authors will be especially
prone to include idrefs of links inside aria-describedby and aria-labelledby.
It is instead based on what is likely to be useful to the AT user. 

Also, I do think that we should at least please avoid that authors get the
wrong ideas. It is enough to take @longdesc as example: Had the W3 HTML4
validator had URL valdiation, then misunderstanding that some developed (namely
the belive it could contain text) would not have affected the HTMLwg in its
work with speccing HTML5. 

The fact that HTML5 includes URL validation for all *valid* attributes that can
take URLs, is a sign which shows that there is faith in performing attribute
value validation. 

Meanwhile, the kind of warning I suggest for aria-describedby is not a normal
error warning, but ratheer a "this is probably wrong" kind of warning.

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Received on Tuesday, 22 March 2011 18:19:18 UTC