Re: Change proposal for ISSUE-85

On 06/15/2010 08:13 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
> Hi Ian,
>
> On Jun 15, 2010, at 5:02 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 15 Jun 2010, Sam Ruby wrote:
>>>
>>> Steven makes the case that this reasoning also applies to style
>>> attributes and href attributes with javascript: schemes.  See
>>> also bug 9872:
>>>
>>> Care to update your proposal to address (either by incorporation
>>> or refutation) this?
>>
>> I don't understand the relevance of that statement to this issue.
>> Are you saying that we should be encouraging the use of style=""
>> attribute and href="javascript:" attributes? That would seem to fly
>> in the face of a decade of accessibility advocacy. Could you
>> elaborate on how you see these points affecting this issue?
>
> I think Sam's point was this: using href="javascript:" and the
> style="" attribute, one can make a link look and act like a button.
> The spec makes this valid, but makes it invalid to apply an ARIA role
> describing it as a button.

Credit where credit is due, it was Steven's point.  I was simply asking 
Ian if he cared to update his proposal in order to address this issue.

> I the case of href="javascript:..." in particular, it seems to me
> that pretty much any time that is present on a link, the link is
> essentially acting as a button rather than as a link. However, the
> spec currently makes javascript: URLs conforming. On the surface, it
> seems inconsistent to allow a feature that can be used in almost no
> other way than to make a button act as a link, but at the same time
> forbid applying ARIA markup to tell AT that it is a button.
>
> I must admit I personally hadn't thought about this issue in
> evaluating the ARIA roles allowed by the HTML5 spec. It seems like
> consistency would call for either disallowing links to javascript:
> URLs (or likewise links to href="#" with mouse event handlers), or
> allowing such links to carry role="button". I don't have a strong
> opinion on this issue, but there is a good argument to be made that
> the current spec is inconsistent.

Indeed.

> Regards, Maciej

- Sam Ruby

Received on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 00:24:58 UTC