Re: 'role' should be property

Hi Thomas,

> If you put semantic data (because I think "roles" belong to the
> semantic facet of documents, the one which allows accessibility for
> everyone) in a stylesheet (or "rolesheet"), the document could
> potentially not have the same "meaning" depending on whether the sheet
> is loaded (supported by the UA) or not. Even worse, you could change
> the semantics of a document by just changing the sheet being used!

Hey...great...you're getting the idea!

Just teasing...but that is the whole point of Dmitri's proposal. One
could take a document over which you have no control, such as an
online newspaper like the New York Times, and then use a stylesheet
that says, the second 'div' with a class of 'xyz' is actually the main
menu, i.e., role="menu". An accessibility interface could make use of
that...a metadata storage system could make use of it...and so on.

But anyway, to stress again, the proposal is about using the
*mechanisms* that were first created for CSS, to add useful
functionality. The selector/property setting mechanism from CSS is far
too useful to use just for styling.

Regards,

Mark

-- 
  Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer

  mark.birbeck@x-port.net | +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
  http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

  standards. innovation.

Received on Thursday, 31 May 2007 14:17:19 UTC