Re: Proposal: ARIA-ROLE & CSS definition integration

Justin James wrote:
>> Interesting, but nothing at all to do with the SWeb project/goals. You are
> still talking > about human/human communication here. The SWeb goal is to
> perform work without human
>> intervention or communication being necessary. Perhaps 'inference web'
> would have been a > better term, but we are stuck with 'semantic web' now.
> 
> This is how I have always view "Semantic Web". A non-special needs user of a
> standard Web browser doesn't need HTML to figure out when red, bold text
> means "important" and when it means "this field on this form is required."
> That Web browser application *does* need semantic tags to act differently on
> red, bold text that should be "important" text as opposed to indicated a
> required form field; so does a search engine, and so do a lot of other
> "interesting" applications.

> Other than the ARIA spec, which should be rolled 100% into HTML 5, I have
> seen little to believe that we are honestly working toward the Semantic Web
> goal. In fact, I see an awful lot that is contrary to it. All of these
> RIA-related features need to be *removed* from HTML 5 unless ARIA is a
> mandatory part of HTML 5 (made part of the spec, and the tags are
> mandatory). To do otherwise is to violate one of our stated goals.

The stated goals where?  The HTML WG charter makes one mention of 
"semantics" (little "s"): "[The deliverable is] A language evolved from 
HTML4 for describing the semantics of documents and applications on the 
World Wide Web."

> So, which bullet do we prefer to bite? Removing the "Web 2.0" stuff from
> HTML 5? Or making ARIA a mandatory set of attributes/tags/whatever in HTML
> 5, and (hopefully) finding a way to make a direct connection between CSS
> definitions and ARIA?

Sounds like a false dichotomy to me, especially given that charter 
specifies the deliverable must contain DOM interfaces, form/UI widgets, 
and various other APIs.  Depends what you mean by "mandatory", of course.