Feedback from NVDA developer James Teh on ARIA landmarks

On 11/5/2008 1:20 AM, James Teh wrote: 
Hi all,

It's probably too late to reconsider this now, but I'm curious 
nevertheless:

Why was it decided to specify ARIA landmarks using ARIA roles? This does 
not seem logical to me:
* The role of an element usually indicates its behaviour and how it 
should be treated.
* Landmarks, on the other hand, provide structural information. They do 
not indicate the behaviour of an element. For example, whether an 
element is a navigation landmark does not affect how it should be 
handled by an AT; it is just a way of easily finding the element.
* I think it would be more logical to specify landmarks in a separate 
attribute.
* Landmarks are generally (always?) handled differently to normal roles 
by ATs. This in itself indicates that role is perhaps not the best 
representation. See also this bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459395

Thoughts greatly appreciated.