Question about ARIA Tab/Tablist/Tabpanel design pattern

Hi,
This may sound like a stupid question, which it is, however I am compelled to ask on behalf of a client.

Is there any requirement in the ARIA spec that states that an ARIA tab design pattern must use role=tabpanel to represent the dynamic content associated with the expanded tab?

I was informed that there isn’t, since the reference to tabpanel is only a “should” whenever referenced in the spec and not a “must”.
https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.2/#tab


As such, I was told, it is perfectly valid according to the spec to use role=region instead. 😊

So, what do you think of that? Is there anything in the spec that says that the ARIA tab design pattern needs to use role=tabpanel instead of role=region to reference the expanded content of a tab?


Bryan Garaventa
Principal Accessibility Architect
Level Access, Inc.
Bryan.Garaventa@LevelAccess.com<mailto:Bryan.Garaventa@LevelAccess.com>
415.624.2709 (o)
www.LevelAccess.com<http://www.levelaccess.com/>