Presentational links - possible with ARIA?

James, 

in HTML5 bug 10919, comment 15, I suggested to make a link 
presentational. This in order to avoid that e.g. a blind person would 
be 'disturbed' by a link which only lead to a larger version of an 
image.

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10919#c15


This lead to some debate in the subsequent comments of that bug: since 
links are focusable and thus, supposedly, role=presentation should be 
ignored. 

But could it still be meaningful or of benefit to describe a link as 
presentational? Would it effectively be like stating that the link has 
two roles, link role and presentation role? Several roles inside @role 
is supposed to be valid. 

Btw, what if a table cell of a presentational table is given the 
tabindex attribute? What would it mean to, in that case, 'expose the 
element with implicit native semantics'?

Leif H Silli


James Craig, Tue, 10 May 2011 16:37:37 -0700:
> On May 10, 2011, at 4:31 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>> But is the bug only that the IMG isn't presented even when it has 
>> explicit focus? Or is it also part of the bug that - when reading the 
>> following sentence as a sentence - the IMG is ignored:
>> 
>>  <p>I <img src=heart alt=love tabindex=0 role=presentation > you.</p>
> 
> If you're asking what I think you're asking, then the answer is that 
> the image should be available at all times, not just when it's 
> focused. According to the spec language below, the user agents must 
> ignore the presentation role when it's focusable, not just when it's 
> focused.
> 
> 
> If an element with a role of presentation is focusable, user agents 
> MUST ignore the normal effect of the role and expose the element with 
> implicit native semantics, in order to ensure that the element is 
> both understandable and operable.

Received on Wednesday, 18 May 2011 13:39:48 UTC