Re: Correctly mapping role="search"

It's a mistake that it's made to sound singular. As you say, there can be 
more than one search tool. Amazon.com has two -- one in the header and one 
in the footer. We should fix the wording to say "A" instead of "The".

In general, live region landmarks can be used multiple times in the same 
document. I think role="main" is the only exception to that -- built into 
the name "main" is the idea that there is only one of them. 

- Aaron



From:
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis@googlemail.com>
To:
W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>
Date:
10/06/2008 09:39 PM
Subject:
Correctly mapping role="search"




Quick comment redirected from the Mozilla dev-accessibility list:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.accessibility/browse_thread/thread/408df1f84a4ea469# 



The current editor's draft for ARIA says role="search" is "The search 
tool of a web document" (singular).

http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/#search

1. What happens if a document offers multiple search tools? For example, 
you might have an online store that sells various categories of goods. A 
category page (say the "DVDs" category page) might feature both a 
sitewide search in the header and (later in the document) a 
category-specific search for DVDs.

2. What happens if a document repeats the same search tool in multiple 
locations, for example both the header and the footer of the page? This 
scenario suggests some degree of conflict between aiding discovery of 
areas of the page and identifying the area of the page currently subject 
to user interaction.

Ideally, the spec should make it clear what authors should do in these 
situations.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis