Re: ARIA role restrictictions in HTML5

I agree, anchor elements work well for this purpose, especially for graceful degradation with radio buttons.

Regarding buttons, I often see A tags styled as buttons for form submission elements.

Not having the ability to put role="button" on such elements to aid screen reader interaction, would impair accessibility, not enhance it. The same is true for Toggle Buttons, and Checkboxes.

A tags are also used for Listbox Option elements, which is also used to support graceful degradation.

This brings me to a question I've been wondering about. 

Is HTML5 supposed to replace ARIA, or will they work together? In other words, will components built using current standards compliant ARIA still be valid ten or twenty years from now?


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jonathan Avila 
  To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 7:25 AM
  Subject: ARIA role restrictictions in HTML5


  I was looking at the latest draft version of the HTML5 specification and noticed in the implicit aria semantics table it indicates that only a limited set of ARIA roles can be used with certain elements such as the anchor element to conform to the HTML5 specification.  Specifically you could not use a role of button, radio button, etc. on anchor elements.    This seems problematic but makes good semantic sense.  One advantage of using anchors with hrefs for diverse ARIA roles is there is some progressive enhancement support.  



  http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/dom.html#sec-implicit-aria-semantics



  Jonathan