Re: change proposal: Allow the a element to have ARIA role attribute values other than link

Hi Maciej,
you are right, i think it does the conformaing roles need to be limited, I
have modiifed the change proposal to reflect this:

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ARIAonanchor#Details

thanks fo the feedback, any further comments welcome.

regards
stevef
On 2 March 2010 08:11, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:

>
>  On Feb 26, 2010, at 4:20 AM, Steven Faulkner wrote:
>
>  Have completed the change proposal for HTML WG tracker Issue 85 [
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/85]
>
> change proposal: Allow the a element to have ARIA role attribute values
> other than link
>
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ARIAonanchor#Negative_Effects
>
> any feedback welcome
>
>
> <chair hat off>
>
> I'd like to check with you whether this proposal is really doing what you
> intend. In Details it says:
>
>  Remove the first row of the first table in the section 3.2.6 Annotations
> for assistive technology products (ARIA).
>
> code/content to be removed:
>
> <tr><td><a href="text-level-semantics.html#the-a-element">a</a> element
> that represents a
> <a href="interactive-elements.html#hyperlink">hyperlink</a></td><td>link role</td></tr>
>
>
> So that will have two effects:
>
> 1) <a> will not be considered to have any default role at all; it will no
> longer be considered role="link" by default.
> 2) Any role whatsoever is allowed on <a>, even dubious things like landmark
> roles, or role="textbox".
>
> Was that really your intention? I think maybe not.
>
> I think if you remove <a> from the "Strong native semantics" table, then
> you should add it to the second table, which defines "Default implied ARIA
> semantics". I suspect you probably intend for <a> to have at least a default
> role of "link", and perhaps you also may want to limit the set of roles
> allowed. I understand from your Change Proposal and your bug that you
> definitely want the "button", "tab" and "menuitem" roles allowed. But I
> suspect roles like "document" or "grid" would indicate an author error.
>
> Note: I'm not necessarily taking a position on whether this should be
> changed at all. I saw what seemed like decent arguments for both sides of
> the issue in the bug. I'm just trying to help you improve your proposal.
>
> Regards,
> Maciej
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

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