What's the real-life meaning of an element?

When implementing an accessibility feature on a particular XML type, I
(or a 3rd party) need some real down-to-earth information. I need to
know what a tag is really "for".

For example, to implement an outline view, I need to know what this
document calls headings. Does it call them <h1>..<h6> or <hdg level="1">
...<hdg level="6">.

This might also be an issue for UI controls. The might be using Xforms,
XUL, or another XML language for the widgets. How does the accessibility
feature know what a "3dbutton" is, if it's  never seen one before.

- Are we going to expect that the accessibility software will need to be
upgraded for each new type of XML?
- Perhaps will it pull a new module off the web for each kind,
- Will there be an attribute bound on each element that tells what it's
"role" and "state" are in generic terms
- Can we relate new elements to old elements using RDF or Schemas, so
that "xul:radiogroup" can be accessible by saying it inherits
accessibility from "xform:multipleSelect" ?

Don't need this tomorrow - just thought I'd get people's brains working
way ahead of time.

Aaron

Received on Monday, 5 March 2001 20:55:06 UTC