- From: Chris Blouch <chris.blouch@corp.aol.com>
- Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:24:49 -0500
- To: James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>
- CC: "'W3C WAI-XTECH'" <wai-xtech@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <49A30611.4020100@corp.aol.com>
I think Matt Machell wasn't saying so much that role:slider was a style but that we should embrace using something like CSS selectors to map one or more DOM nodes to one or more sets of ARIA attributes. Call it a shorthand way to add semantics. If I have 20 sliders and each one is a constructed by a <div class="slider"></div> it seems systemically wrong to have to put in all the ARIA attributes inline repeatedly whether by hand or via a dom walking script. We should have a means to infer the applicable ARIA semantic attributes from the already stated class or other other fingerprints defined by the selector. Maybe the problem is folks call them CSS selectors when really they could be used for broader purposes. Imagine all the handy stuff the selector cascade process could do to auto-generate appropriate ARIA markup for the same generalized chunk of HTML based on the context of its location in the DOM. All those joys and challenges of specificity could be made to work for ARIA as well. CB James Craig wrote: > Chris Blouch wrote: > >> Why didn't we think of this before? > > We did. > >> Matt Machell had the bright idea that we should apply aria attributes >> to a page using the same css selector process we use for styling. >> Something like this: >> >> #first { >> role: slider; >> described-by: #second; >> value-min: 10; >> value-max: 30; >> } > > Justin James had the same idea. See thread. > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2008Jun/0024.html > >> He then went on to write 12 lines of JQuery script to implement the >> technique. See >> http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2009/02/22/a-wai-aria-stylesheet > > I agree that it's useful if implemented through JavaScript. > > As a potential solution for assigning semantics to the DOM, I think > it's a reasonable idea, but I disagree with using this as the standard > method to assign roles. In other words, the CSS WG should not add an > official 'role' property in a /style/ sheet to assign semantic meaning > in the document. > > If this is being used as a workaround for backwards compatibility, > that's fine, but not as the standard way to assign roles. The > method mixes semantics with style by having the JavaScript > (controller) view style information in the CSS (view) to then add > semantic information to the DOM (model) which could have been there to > begin with. > >> This just seems like an infinitely useful solution that ought to be >> developed and implemented native in the browsers. > > It is supported, through XBL or HTC, but only the JavaScript option is > well-supported. >
Received on Monday, 23 February 2009 21:01:28 UTC