RE: Proposal: ARIA-ROLE & CSS definition integration

James -

> Are you implying that more search engines parse CSS than parse  
> JavaScript? If so, please share the research data or link. Even if  
> your new "semantics within a style language" syntax were approved in a  
> later version of CSS, it would be years before search engines or user  
> agents supported it. ARIA 1.0 is a stop-gap measure that works now, in  
> today's technology.

Nope, not on purpose, but I can see why you think that I would be implying
that. It is certainly much easier to have a non-browser UA fold the CSS in
and search for ARIA-esque information than to run JavaScript though. Raise
your hand if your programming language of choice comes with a JavaScript
interpreter that is aware of the full HTML DOM and it is not running inside
a Web browser. :)

> If the 'textual analysis' mention refers to other UAs such as screen  
> readers, then remember that ARIA is about defining semantics for Rich  
> Internet Applications, almost all of which get their rich interactions  
> with the help of JavaScript.

Then the ARIA group is being shortsighted (in an obtusely complimentary
way... they've created something much more useful that they are scoping it
for!). Seriously, from what I've read of the ARIA spec (not being a member
of the group or anything), the mistake is that it is limited to RIA's; it
should be folded in to all of HTML, and it should be quite tightly linked,
and all HTML tags should directly map to the ARIA spec.

"Semantic Web" is a defined and explicitly stated goal of the HTML spec.
What can we do to help get us there?

J.Ja

Received on Monday, 9 June 2008 03:46:55 UTC