- From: Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 10:05:33 -0400
- To: HTMLWG WG <public-html@w3.org>, W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>
A few weeks ago, in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/0899.html Smylers wrote: >> Aria is specifically about accessibility for those with disibilities. >> A user without any disabilities using, say, Lynx or Firefox with images >> turned off, would not be using any technology that processes aira-* >> attributes. As such she would not see an alternative to the missing >> image, and would not know the purpose of the link. Ian agreed with: > ARIA is intended as an accessibility API layer above the semantics > of HTML ... last resort ... even with ARIA as an integral part of the > language ... I don't think that removing ARIA markup should ever > make a page non-conforming. Why can't lynx or firefox use the aria-* attributes? If (as suggested) the aria spec itself forbids this, then I think that is a bug in the aria spec. For "alt" in particular, it makes sense to keep using the legacy attribute, because of the installed base. For new elements, I see nothing wrong with defining accessibility or fallback in terms of ARIA-* attributes, and I see nothing wrong with mainstream user agents relying on those attributes when they need information that the aria-* attributes supply. If anything, I think it would be a positive good, as mistakes in aria-* would then become more visible. -jJ
Received on Wednesday, 2 September 2009 14:06:36 UTC