Re: Next steps for the ARIA syntax discussion

> L. David Baron 
> One other point is that I'd been told by some people that ARIA
> itself was only a short-term stopgap until additional semantic
> elements / attributes were available in HTML.  If that's the case
> (is it?), how concerned should we be about long-term issues?

It would be quite risky to assume ARIA is stop-gap. How do you see the 
need for ARIA going away?  Do you really think people will suddenly stop 
using or developing JavaScript UI toolkits at some point? Or is some 
better extensibility mechanism going to take over, which allows for a11y 
semantics to be added? If ARIA is to go away, we'll need standards and 
consistent implementations for HTML widgets. We'll need a widget 
extensibility layer which provides some other means of exposing a11y 
semantics will need to be added, and all browsers will need to have some 
way of supporting that. There is no guarantee we will get there -- that 
all vendors will be willing or that 3rd party solutions will find 
traction.

The need for a11y APIs has never gone away on the desktop -- developers 
are always creating new widget sets even when there is a built-in one. 
That is why a11y APIs are so important. Developers will always want to 
create their own widgets and those should be made accessible.

- Aaron