picking up on some comments in IRC on ARIA

I have pulled out some points from a recent IRC conversation about ARIA (
http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090901#l-573) that i thought worth
discussing further

<annevk2> I actually thought the plan would be that someone defined an
abstract accessibility API that we'd map elements against

there are accessibility APIs that browsers map elements and attributes to
(that have roles/states/properties covered by the APis) these are what ARIA
is mapped to
 refer to http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-implementation/#mapping_role and
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-implementation/#mapping_state-property


<othermaciej> I'm not sure a strict mapping to accessibility APIs makes
sense, because it would make it impossible to put any novel and clever
heuristics on the UA side instead of the AT side --
Can you explain this further? if the UI is not mapped to accessibility APIs
Assistive technology has to pull this info from the DOM, which is something
you suggested previously in the alt="" vs role="presentation" discussion was
not desirable for voiceover.


<hsivonen> Hixie: In my thinking, "strong native semantic" didn't imply that
the native semantic has to match an ARIA role

I think you are correct, in some cases there is no ARIA role or any
accessibility API role that matches and it does not make any sense trying to
map them.



with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
Web Accessibility Toolbar -
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html