Re: ARIA use in HTML other than for accessibility.

Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, 2015-05-01 12:19 +0100:
> Archived-At: <http://www.w3.org/mid/CA+ri+VkwQz3Og+xUGFwW3PQCBSV1WWp3t0j53aagJsrNH+esSg@mail.gmail.com>
> ...
> I don't see a problem with other technologies making use of the information
> provided via ARIA (for accessibility purposes), for more general purposes,
> but the addition of ARIA semantics by developers should not be *driven* by
> use cases other than for adding useful information about the UI to directly
> aid user interaction.

I think that’s the key point here.

I think a big reason ARIA 1.0 has been a success on the Web is because in
practice its use thus far has been prudently scoped to solving a specific
well-recognized very-important real-world user problem.

All the people who have invested years of time in developing ARIA and
evangelizing it and educating others about it have succeeded in getting Web
author-developers on scale to recognize ARIA markup as an essential tool
for helping to solve important accessibility problems for real users.

Given all that I think it would be imprudent for anybody to risk diluting
that success—and diluting the years of investment that have gone into ARIA—
by ending up scope-creeping ARIA into something else that has a much less
clearly focused purpose.

  —Mike

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith https://people.w3.org/mike