Minor notes (Last Call comment on WAI-ARIA)

Hi,

This e-mail contains a few minor issues I noticed while reading the 
WAI-ARIA document.


The "4.2.5. Required Child Elements" section uses the word "must" 
(lowercase) in a way that appears to be a conformance requirement:

# Any element that must be owned by the element with this role.

It's not clear whether that is intended to be an RFC2119 MUST or just a 
passing comment. If the latter, the section doesn't have any requirements. 
Is the "Required Child Elements" line purely informative, with the 
requirement given by the "Parent Element" line? If so, then it's not clear 
how the relationship between a "list" and a "group" fits into the 
requirements (since "group" doesn't require a "list" parent).


The "For example" in the "4.2.5. Required Child Elements" section 
contradicts the definition of "list", which allows "group" as well as 
"listitem" to be a child.


The following example in "4.2.6. Parent Element" should probably not use 
the RFC2119 term "SHOULD" since it's only an example requirement:

# For example an element with role listitem SHOULD be contained inside (or 
# owned by) an element with role list.


It would be good if the spec could be clearer about whether parent/child 
relationships matter for the purpose of requirements on nesting. For 
example, the spec says that "treeitem" is a child role of "listitem", but 
it isn't clear if that means that you can put a "treeitem" in a "listbox" 
It's clearly intended that a "row" can contain any kind of "gridcell" 
including a "columnheader", so one might think the same applies for 
"treeitem" and "listbox". However, "treeitem" itself says the parent 
element must be a "tree".


The bullet point in "6.1.3. Focus Navigation" is unclear. I have no idea 
what it is trying to say.


The yellow box in "9.1.1. Roles Implementation" says that there is still 
editorial work to be done.


Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 2 April 2009 03:24:51 UTC