Fwd: Role attribute values

Hello all,

I've been asked to forward these comments to those involved in ARIA.
Obviously I am happy to do that, but I would just say that I think
some of my comments relate to exactly what @role is all about, and
therefore raise some conceptual issues.

In other words, I think there may need to be some parallel discussion
over on the XHTML 2 list, about exactly how the values that are
'imported' into the XHTML vocab list should be structured.

Regards,

Mark


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Birbeck <mark.birbeck@x-port.net>
Date: 2008/4/5
Subject: Re: Role attribute values
To: Shane McCarron <shane@aptest.com>
Cc: XHTML WG <public-xhtml2@w3.org>, Michael Cooper <cooper@w3.org>


Hi Shane,

 I just read this really quickly so these are not all of my comments,
 but here are a few quick ones.

 1. Having 'double names' seems to be redundant, and reduce the
 potential usefulness. An example would be @role="alertdialog", which
 can be just as easily expressed as @role="alert dialog". This is more
 useful from a processing point of view, and also reduces the size of
 the vocabulary.

 2. Similarly, @role="menuitemcheckbox" seems unnecessary, since the
 element in question could more usefully be expressed as a menu item,
 that is also a checkbox, i.e., @role="menuitem checkbox".

 3. Qualifying a name based on its context also seems to reduce the
 potential usefulness of a name. For example, just because a 'gridcell'
 is most likely to be used in a 'grid', doesn't mean that is the only
 place there will be 'cells'. That causes a problem in the future,
 because it means authors either have to use 'gridcell' outside of the
 context of a 'grid'--which would seem awkward--or they would have to
 invent some new role name for 'a cell'. Yet if we call this thing
 'cell' instead of 'gridcell' from the beginning, we'll not have this
 problem.

 4. Some things seem to be oddly named. Why is a range control named a
 'slider'? That points very much towards a specific style of UI
 rendering, and doesn't really speak to accessibility. Also, since a
 'spinbutton' is described as a range control, why not make it an
 actual range control?

 Also, unrelated to the content, why are some of the properties marked
 up as having a datatype of xsd:string? If it's to inhibit the
 rdf:XMLLiteral processing, wouldn't it be better to just use
 @datatype="", and get a plain literal?

 Regards,

 Mark

 2008/4/4 Shane McCarron <shane@aptest.com>:


>
 >  Thanks to the hard work of Michael Cooper, the current list of ARIA-defined
 > roles is now included in the XHTML vocabulary document at
 > http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab
 >
 >  While doing this, he and I noticed that there is some duplication between
 > ARIA-defined roles and XHTML module-defined roles.  This was of course
 > unintentional.  My proposal would be that we harmonize these lists as soon
 > as possible - preferably by removing any role values that the ARIA group
 > thinks are unnecessary.   Since the list came from them in the first place,
 > and was just updated by them a few weeks ago, this makes the most sense to
 > me.
 >
 >  This is not urgent, and we can update this document as we need to.  But I
 > didn't want to lose the thread.  Roland, can you please put this on the
 > agenda for next Wednesday?
 >
 >  --
 >  Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
 >  Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
 >  ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com
 >
 >
 >
 >



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  Mark Birbeck

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  http://www.x-port.net | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

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-- 
 Mark Birbeck

 mark.birbeck@x-port.net | +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
 http://www.x-port.net | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

 x-port.net Ltd. is registered in England and Wales, number 03730711
 The registered office is at:

 2nd Floor
 Titchfield House
 69-85 Tabernacle Street
 London
 EC2A 4RR

Received on Monday, 7 April 2008 17:56:58 UTC