Thoughts on roles and conformance to SC 4.1.1 Parsing

ARIA roles allow for flexibility in particular to correct semantic structure when it is incorrect and not easily changeable.  I wanted to get others opinions on situations where ARIA roles are mixed with semantic structures and the HTML nu validator indicates missing nesting structures.  Accessibility support is also a related concern.

For example, we have an unordered list with child elements that are not list items.  We then add an ARIA role to the list items.  We might end up with something like the below:
<ul>
  <p role="listitem">Apples</p>
  <p role="listitem">Oranges</p>
  <p role="listitem">Bananas</p>
</ul>

The opposite might also be true - say we have li elements within a div with role="list".  A similar situation often occurs with grid/table structures that have some table semantics but then use divs with "gridcell".  So in regards to SC 4.1.1 what are your thoughts on mixing native structures with ARIA roles?  Would it be best then to reapply the default native semantic role?

Jonathan

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Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group
jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com<mailto:jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com>
Phone 703.637.8957
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