Re: aria vs html5 (was: ARIA States and Properties Meeting)

Hi Anne,

> Yes. Although I'm not convinced the other uses of role= make sense. I'm
> also not sure if overloading role= to do both ARIA and those other things
> makes sense.

@role predates ARIA by quite a long time. It was designed as a
general-purpose extension mechanism to facilitate exactly the type of
thing that the ARIA specification is using it for.

So your statements are essentially the wrong way round:

  * of course "other uses of role" make sense, since no single use is any
    more or less appropriate than any other...it's a general-purpose mechanism
    after all;

  * since @role was designed specifically as an extension mechanism, then
    it cannot be "overloaded"--that would imply it had a primary 'meaning' which
    was being co-opted, which of course is impossible with a general-purpose
    mechanism.

In short ARIA does not define the purpose of @role, it simply makes
use of @role.

Regards,

Mark

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  Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer

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