Conflict Resolution

Hi All,

A topic that bubbled up on our call today was around conflict resolution:
what do we do if/when an author uses the wrong attribute?

<opinion>
I think one of the positives for staying with 3 attributes (action /
destination / purpose) is that it would make parsing tools (i.e. the W3C
validator) far simpler to catch author errors. Actions belong on buttons
(<button>, role="button"), destinations belong on links (<a href...>,
role="link") and purpose belongs on form inputs. The direct 1-1 mapping
means that if the author does not respect the mapping, it generates an
error. That is both simple to catch via a validator, and simple to teach
authors moving forward. (Two key considerations we should keep in mind
IMHO).

To that end, I would also propose that our attributes take the exact
opposite approach from what ARIA attributes do (strong semantics -
over-rides native semantics) by instead having weak ("hint") semantics. In
other words, our attributes augment existing elements, they don't seek to
modify or change them in any way. I believe this would also resolve the
open question related to computed roles: our attributes simply augment
whatever the role is computed to be.

More specifically, a form input will always have a role of 'input', and
our @purpose attribute would not change that - it simply and unambiguously
clarifies what type of content is expected.

And while I appreciate Matthew's "less is more" approach in trying to merge
the 3 attributes of action, destination, and purpose into one 'super'
attribute, I personally don't think we're gaining that much, and
potentially we may be introducing more confusion.
</opinion>

JF
-- 
*John Foliot* | Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility

"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." -
Pascal "links go places, buttons do things"