Re: ARIA use in HTML other than for accessibility.

I see no issue with using ARIA to improve the accessibility of content
beyond what is already provided.

For example:
Enabling landmark-based keyboard navigation via an extension
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2013/07/enabling-landmark-based-keyboard-navigation-in-firefox/

or via browser implementation:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=670928




--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>

On 1 May 2015 at 22:54, Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:

> Let me draw your attention to:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/introduction#ua-support
>
> Which includes the following:
>
> "The WAI-ARIA specification neither requires or forbids user agents from
> enhancing native presentation and interaction behaviors on the basis of
> WAI-ARIA markup.  Mainstream user agents might expose WAI-ARIA
> navigational landmarks (for example, as a dialog box or through a
> keyboard command) with the intention to facilitate navigation for all
> users. User agents are encouraged to maximize their usefulness to users,
> including users without disabilities."
>
> The above, taken from the ARIA-1.0 TR continues present in the current
> ARIA-1.1 drafts.
>
> Janina
>
>
> Steven Faulkner writes:
> > Note: have ccd HTML a11y taskforce and PF, but please reply to HTML WG
> list
> > so a broader audience can read and contribute.
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > There is some discussion  going on currently about the uses of ARIA for
> > cases other than accessibility.
> >
> > My understanding in the context of HTML is that ARIA is to be used to
> allow
> > web developers to assign semantics to HTML content in order to make it
> > understandable to assistive technology users. And that it should only be
> > used when HTML features do not have this information baked in or
> developers
> > are building custom UI. Hence my formulation of the First [informative]
> > rule of ARIA [1] and the conformance requirements on ARIA in HTML [4]
> >
> > The ARIA 1.1 spec appears to align with this view:
> >
> > > These semantics are designed to allow an author to properly convey user
> > > interface behaviors and structural information to assistive
> technologies in
> > > document-level markup.
> > >
> >
> >  So I was somewhat surprised to see a tweet [3] yesterday from Rich
> > Schwerdtfeger:
> >
> > ARIA is providing more semantics than host languages and it is growing.
> > > Developers and Designers would be foolish to limit its use to a11y.
> > >
> >
> >
> > I see problems arising from the use of ARIA in HTML for purposes other
> than
> > UI accessibility including:
> >
> > * Conflict with native HTML accessibility semantics
> > * Unnecessary cruft build up in the corpus of HTML documents due to its
> > extended use.
> > * Dilution of its relationship to accessibility APIs semantics and
> increase
> > in complexity of an already complex vocabulary.
> >
> > I would really think there is a need for this stuff to be more thoroughly
> > discussed, especially in relation to ARIA use in HTML as a host language.
> >
> > Review at your leasure, comment at will.
> >
> > [1] http://w3c.github.io/aria-in-html/#first-rule-of-aria-use
> > [2] http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#h-abstract
> > [3] https://twitter.com/rschwer/status/593758137989013504
> > [4] http://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > SteveF
> > HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
>
> --
>
> Janina Sajka,   Phone:  +1.443.300.2200
>                         sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
>                 Email:  janina@rednote.net
>
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:       http://a11y.org
>
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair,  Protocols & Formats     http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
>         Indie UI                        http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
>
>