Re: Change proposal for ISSUE-85

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 11:10 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
> On Jun 15, 2010, at 10:46 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>
>> One thing that would be good to get clarified is how a UA is supposed
>> to handle <a role=button>.
>
> I believe this is already clear. The current WAI-ARIA Working Draft says:
>
> "Host languages MAY document features that should not be overridden with WAI-ARIA (these are called "strong native semantics"). These can be features that have implicit WAI-ARIA semantics, as well as features where the processing would be uncertain if the semantics were changed with WAI-ARIA. Conformance checkers SHOULD signal an error or warning when a WAI-ARIA role is used on features with strong native semantics, even though user agents process the feature as described above."
>
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/host_languages#host_general_conflict>
>
> HTML5 defines <a> as having strong native semantics with an implied role of "link": <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#annotations-for-assistive-technology-products-aria>
>
> HTML5 does not have any requirements that would override or contradict the WAI-ARIA requirements quoted above.
>
> Thus, UAs are required to respect the role on <a role=button>, regardless of whether it is conforming or not.
>
>> I think a good argument could be made that if someone has gone through
>> the trouble to add 'role=button' to an element, then that is likely
>> the most accurate role. Thus I think a reasonable argument could be
>> made that we should forward this information to AT users.
>
> I think you are right, and I believe this is already required by the combination of the relevant specifications.

Ah, excellent. It might be worth pointing this out in the change
proposal, though maybe this was obvious to everyone that knows ARIA
well enough.

/ Jonas

Received on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 12:05:55 UTC