[Bug 20420] New: Clarify, with ARIA language, if role of <main> can be overridden.

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=20420

            Bug ID: 20420
           Summary: Clarify, with ARIA language, if role of <main> can be
                    overridden.
    Classification: Unclassified
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: PC
               URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/html-main-element/#guidance
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P3
         Component: maincontent element
          Assignee: faulkner.steve@gmail.com
          Reporter: xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no
        QA Contact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: public-html-admin@w3.org

Spec text says: "User agents MUST map the main element to the ARIA landmark
role of main." 

However, the spec does not, in ARIA terms, clarify whether <main> is supposed
to have "strong native semantics" or "default implicit ARIA semantics"

http://w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/infrastructure#strong-native-semantics
http://w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/infrastructure#default-implicit-aria-semantics

(also known from HTML5’s two ARIA tables)

http://w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/dom#sec-strong-native-semantics
http://w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/dom#sec-implicit-aria-semantics

Use cases, the options:

(1) <main role=presentation> (default implicit semantics of "main" is
overridden by a permitted alternative role) in combination with a *permission*
to place the "main" role on *another* element than <main> (which may only occur
once).

(2) <main role=presentation> (default implicit semantics of "main" is
overridden by a permitted alternative role) in combination with a *forbiddance*
from placing the "main" role on *another* element than on the <main> element
(which may only occur once). In this case, the page would be prevented from
having any element of the "main" role until <main> is given its native role
again.

(3) <main role=presentation> (strong semantics, which are overridden, against
the rules of the spec.) Overrding the semantics would still be possible but it
would be an author error.

Evaluation of the options: 

(1) Option (1) could be justified if fixing up authoring errors via aria (e.g.
if <main> is not actually containing the main content) is a use case that
should be considered when defining the permitted roles. (I am not sure it
should.)

(2) Option (2), which can be seen as a variant of option (1), makes sense if
there could be given a usecase for *not* including an element of role "main" on
the page but where the <main> element as such was still useful to keep on the
page, for whatever reason (e.g. for styling reasons).

(3) Option 3 may seem most straight forward.

Conclusion/Proposal: I leave this up to the editor.

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Received on Tuesday, 18 December 2012 01:47:48 UTC