Re: ARIA use in HTML other than for accessibility.

Let me draw your attention to:

http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/introduction#ua-support

Which includes the following:

"The WAI-ARIA specification neither requires or forbids user agents from
enhancing native presentation and interaction behaviors on the basis of
WAI-ARIA markup.  Mainstream user agents might expose WAI-ARIA
navigational landmarks (for example, as a dialog box or through a
keyboard command) with the intention to facilitate navigation for all
users. User agents are encouraged to maximize their usefulness to users,
including users without disabilities."

The above, taken from the ARIA-1.0 TR continues present in the current
ARIA-1.1 drafts.

Janina


Steven Faulkner writes:
> Note: have ccd HTML a11y taskforce and PF, but please reply to HTML WG list
> so a broader audience can read and contribute.
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> There is some discussion  going on currently about the uses of ARIA for
> cases other than accessibility.
> 
> My understanding in the context of HTML is that ARIA is to be used to allow
> web developers to assign semantics to HTML content in order to make it
> understandable to assistive technology users. And that it should only be
> used when HTML features do not have this information baked in or developers
> are building custom UI. Hence my formulation of the First [informative]
> rule of ARIA [1] and the conformance requirements on ARIA in HTML [4]
> 
> The ARIA 1.1 spec appears to align with this view:
> 
> > These semantics are designed to allow an author to properly convey user
> > interface behaviors and structural information to assistive technologies in
> > document-level markup.
> >
> 
>  So I was somewhat surprised to see a tweet [3] yesterday from Rich
> Schwerdtfeger:
> 
> ARIA is providing more semantics than host languages and it is growing.
> > Developers and Designers would be foolish to limit its use to a11y.
> >
> 
> 
> I see problems arising from the use of ARIA in HTML for purposes other than
> UI accessibility including:
> 
> * Conflict with native HTML accessibility semantics
> * Unnecessary cruft build up in the corpus of HTML documents due to its
> extended use.
> * Dilution of its relationship to accessibility APIs semantics and increase
> in complexity of an already complex vocabulary.
> 
> I would really think there is a need for this stuff to be more thoroughly
> discussed, especially in relation to ARIA use in HTML as a host language.
> 
> Review at your leasure, comment at will.
> 
> [1] http://w3c.github.io/aria-in-html/#first-rule-of-aria-use
> [2] http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#h-abstract
> [3] https://twitter.com/rschwer/status/593758137989013504
> [4] http://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Regards
> 
> SteveF
> HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Received on Friday, 1 May 2015 21:54:28 UTC