Re: Removal of other semantic elements

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:56 PM, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote:
> Jonas Sicking wrote:
>>
>> To be clear, I feel the same way about the change proposals for
>> ISSUE-90, ISSUE-91, ISSUE-93, ISSUE-95 and ISSUE-97 as I do for
>> ISSUE-96. I.e. that removing semantic elements and attributes is bad
>> for accessibility, even when ARIA can be used to add similar or
>> equivalent semantic meaning.
>>
>> I'm definitely interested to hear what people with more accessibility
>> related experience than me think about this.
>>
>> I believe Steven Faulkner said that he didn't want any other
>> "controls" removed from the spec, which I would take to encompass at
>> least ISSUE-97. But I'm interested to hear his and others feelings
>> regarding the other change proposals too.
>
> Jonas,
> I was reminded of this note going back to July 2007 from Al Gilman and the
> PFWG, as the WHAT WG work was being re-integrated into W3C space:
>
>        "The working group likes the idea of having built in semantics in
> HTML and in particular would prefer to have common document elements, such
> as widgets built in to the markup. This reduces download size and the
> effort required to make a web page accessible. For these reasons, we would
> promote the use of such markup over the ARIA approach. That said, we do
> believe that HTML 5 will not incorporate document elements for all those
> included in the ARIA role taxonomy nor will it include all the states and
> properties. For these reasons, backward compatibility for the ARIA
> specifications is a must."
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jul/0903.html
>
>
> I believe that the majority of the accessibility folks have been pretty
> consistent on this/these issues from the get-go, and that the current
> specification reflects the thoughts/requests articulated 3 years ago
> w.r.t. having semantically meaningful elements and browser-based widgets
> invoked via a common element (ie: <progress>, <meter>, etc.). I suspect
> that the series of Change Proposals you note above will likely not find a
> high level of support from others in the larger accessibility community
> (although I dare not speak for others); however FWIW I for one do not
> agree with any of them.
>
> JF
>


I look forward to reading the counter-proposals to my proposals, and
promise to respond--thoughtfully and thoroughly--when they are
provided.

Hopefully the co-chairs will issue a call for counter-proposals soon.

Shelley

Received on Friday, 2 April 2010 22:01:17 UTC