Comments about the Document Conformance section

> 6.1 Document Conformance
>
> The ARIA roles, states, and properties is not a stand-alone document  
> type. It is intended to be integrated into other host languages such  
> as XHTML [XHTML]. A conforming document is a document that requires  
> only the facilities described as mandatory in this specification and  
> the facilities described as mandatory in its host language. Such a  
> document must meet all the following criteria:
>
>    1. The document must conform to the constraints expressed in  
> Appendix A - RDF Schema combined with the constraints expressed in  
> its host language implementation.

The spec doesn't say how to preprocess the ARIA markup into something  
to which RDF Schema processing would be applicable. In any case, I  
think it is inappropriate to tie to conformance definition to a  
particular schema technology. Instead, the spec should require  
adherence to machine-testable assertions about document conformance  
made in the prose and in the tables in the normative sections of the  
document.

>    2. The document must contain an xmlns declaration for the role  
> Namespace [XML-NAMES]. The namespace name for the roles defined here  
> is
>
>       http://www.w3.org/2005/01/wai-rdf/GUIRoleTaxonomy#

As HTML currently exists and given the aria-* syntax, this requirement  
does not make sense.

>    3. The document must conform to the constraints expressed in  
> XHTML 1.1 For Accessible Adaptable Applications DTD combined with  
> the constraints expressed in its host language implementation.

I think it is inappropriate to tie the conformance definition to a  
particular schema technology. In particular, it shouldn't be tied to  
legacy technologies such as DTD (or XSD).

>    4. The document must use either of the following:
>          1. The following Doctype declaration: <DOCTYPE html PUBLIC  
> "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 For Accessible Adaptable Applications//EN" "http://www.w3.org/2005/07/aaa/xhtml11-aaa.dtd 
> "> This extends XHTML with ARIA States and Properties added to the  
> common attribute set.
>
>             Editorial Note: the public string of the DTD may need to  
> be updated to match ARIA name, here and elsewhere it appears. We  
> also need to look at what this would do to the aria namespace, and  
> whether it should have trailing slash (currently does because of  
> link checker).

This requirement is not appropriate for HTML5 and SVG integration.

>          2. The document may also contain an XML Namespace [XML- 
> NAMES] declaration for the author properties namespace. The  
> namespace for States and Properties module is defined to be: http://www.w3.org/2005/07/aaa 
> . An example start tag of a root element might look like:
>             <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"  
> xmlns:aria="http://www.w3.org/2005/07/aaa" >

This is a "may"--not a requirement.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 26 March 2008 10:30:42 UTC