Aria Syntax in SVG

Hi, ARIA fans-

About 7-8 months ago, there was a lengthy discussion about the syntax 
for ARIA in HTML and in SVG.  All parties agreed that for the 
convenience of authors and the uptake of the technology, there should be 
a consistent syntax among languages.  The use of namespaces seemed to be 
problematic in HTML for legacy browser reasons (for want of a colon the 
namespace was lost).

Ultimately, the SVG WG agreed that because it is an accessibility issue, 
it was more important that a single solution be deployed than that it 
adhered to the namespace architecture.  We still remain committed to the 
XML Namespaces extensibility model in general, and believe that it is a 
more robust solution, but in this one instance are making ARIA a 
first-class extension to SVG.

Somehow at the end of the debate, it wasn't sufficiently clear to WAI 
PFWG that the SVG WG had bought into the "aria-*" prefix syntax, so this 
is an email to affirm that we are committed to making ARIA work in SVG 
this way [1].  If I understand correctly, this already works in Firefox, 
so this is an exciting development.

I've raised an issue on it in HCG [2], to make sure the coordination is 
clear.

We also resolved at our most recent F2F [3] to make an SVG module 
specification that incorporates the XHTML 'role' attribute, and to work 
with the WAI ARIA folks (as well as other domain experts) to define a 
set of roles in this module.  This module should also provide a schema 
for the validation of SVG and ARIA.

We look forward to collaborating with you, and think that this will be a 
great step forward for accessibility in SVG.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2008/06/12-svg-minutes.html#item06
[2] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/CoordGroup/track/issues/2
[3] http://www.w3.org/2008/05/22-svg-minutes.html#item05

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, WebApps, SVG, and CDF

Received on Friday, 20 June 2008 20:40:02 UTC