[Bug 11557] Authors should not be allowed to specify roles on elements that they already have by default. It's redundant and encourages authors to add roles in cargo-cult fashion on the theory that this will improve their accessibility. See IRC for proof: http://kr

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=11557

--- Comment #3 from Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> 2010-12-15 18:56:34 UTC ---
This isn't arbitrary XML, though.  It's one of the most widely-used document
formats in the world.  If an AT doesn't understand HTML well enough to
automatically know that an <option> in a <select> is a role=option, then it's
useless for almost the entirety of the web, as very few sites use any ARIA at
all, and those that do usually only use a smattering for actual accessibility
"fix up", not accessibility redundancy.

I think the use-case of sites that want to cater to fundamentally broken and
useless ATs by providing redundant information is outweighed by the economic
cost of the storage/bandwidth eaten by the added markup and additional time
spent adding that markup (if you're being thorough, the annotations are *very*
pervasive even on an average webpage) by webdevs who are just trying to be good
web citizens and don't realize that it's unnecessary in any half-useful AT.

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Received on Wednesday, 15 December 2010 18:56:37 UTC