Re: [XHTML-role] How to define roles still needs clarification (PR#8001)

There are two issues in here.  As to machine discovery of vocabulary, the
working group has resolved to tighten up the conformance requirement about
discovery.  This will be in the next working draft.

As to priority of role values, the working group agrees that this is important,
but is not part of the Role spec necessarily.  The Role spec does not have
normative behavioral requirements in it, and therefore does not have any
requriement as to how a user agent might interpret the value(s) of the role
attribute.  This is a vocabulary issue, and the working group expects this will
be resolved as part of future vocabulary work either by the XHTML 2 Working
Group or by related activities such as ARIA.


> Hi
> 
> This is a comment for "XHTML Role Attribute Module"
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xhtml-role-20061113
> 2006-11-13
> Working Draft
> 
> Re:
> 
>> Note that current best practice is that the URI associated with that
>> namespace resolve to a resource that allows for the discovery of the
>> definition of the roles in the namespace.
> 
> As I suggested back in September,
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2006Sep/0030.html
> 
> 
> Surely it should be an *absolute and fundamental requirement* (not
> merely "best practice") for "the URI associated with" a role's namespace
> to "resolve to a resource that allows for the discovery of the
> definition of the roles in the namespace" so that user agents can always
> learn new roles?
> 
> Re:
> 
>> User agents, search engines, etc. may interpret these relationships in
>> a variety of ways
> 
> If browsers are to learn new roles, should it not be an absolute
> requirement for role definitions to include machine-understandable
> suggestions on how to interpret and render such relationships, aurally
> and visually?
> 
> Should it not also be an absolute requirement for role definitions to
> include a machine-understandable specification of whether the defined
> relationships are:
> 
> 1. Of primary importance and must be obviously exposed to end-users
> (like ordinary hyperlinks).
> 
> 2. Only of secondary importance, with access dependent on end-users
> requesting more information (like the TITLE attribute in HTML4).
> 
> 3. Unimportant to end-users (like the CLASS attribute in HTML4).
> 
> Should such styling and behaviours be entirely dependent on (potentially
> disabled) stylesheets and scripting, and does that conflict with
> accessibility requirements? This must be clarified.
> 
> Bear in mind, when considering this question, the example of the radical
> difference in treatment by current browsers between the HREF attribute
> of LINK, the HREF attribute of A, and the under-appreciated CITE
> attribute of INS, DEL, Q, and BLOCKQUOTE in HTML 4.01. No rendering was
> suggested and no importance was specified for CITE, and it has been
> mostly ignored, undermining its potential to extend hypertext in
> interesting ways.
> 
> (I'm cross-posting to the www-html list for discussion.)
> 
> --
> Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
> 
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 19 February 2008 09:30:15 UTC