Solution to grammar, spelling, and

So, over the break we (David, Charles, and I) discussed a way to address
the grammar, spelling, and caret tracking issues in the canvas subtree
without having to introduce new HTML tags or requiring exposing new APIs
that provide this information to canvas application authors having to synch
the canvas to the canvas subtree.

The alternative solution is to use ARIA with some slight modifications:

In the canvas subtree we would simply make use of aria-invalid which
already exposes grammar and spelling errors and it is a global attribute in
ARIA 1.0:

<mark aria-invalid="grammar"> See run Spot. </mark>
or
<mark aria-invalid="spelling">See Spot Rn. </mark>

As for selected content we simply do apply aria-selected="true" to any
content:

<mark aria-selected="true"> ... </div>

The modification would be to make aria-selected an ARIA global attribute
and address the accessibility API mapping for it. This is very straight
forward.

For a caret we simply have a collapsed section:

<mark aria-selected="true"></mark>

This is all very clean, requires minimal impact to the existing browser
implementations and in fact puts more control in the hands of cloud-based
offerings where they are not limited to what the browser is doing for them
in contenteditable sections.

Frank would you and the IE team support this approach? I would like to
discuss this on Monday's call as well.

Rich Schwerdtfeger
CTO Accessibility Software Group