Comments on: Speeding adoption of WAI-ARIA

By: The Paciello Group Blog » How Can I Validate (X)HTML + ARIA?

The Paciello Group Blog » How Can I Validate (X)HTML + ARIA? — Thu, 07 May 2009 09:16:32 +0000

[...] have undertaken this exercise, because people have asked about ARIA validation and I myself wanted to be able to check documents containing ARIA. [...]

By: steve faulkner

steve faulkner — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:23:38 +0000

Correction – in regards to dev version of W3C HTML validator
henri Sivonen wrote:
“If you use the HTML5 doctype, you can get the same ARIA validation at http://qa-dev.w3.org/wmvs/HEAD/ that you can get at http://html5.validator.nu/.“

@bruce
“Steve, I hope that HTML 5 will adopt all the important features of ARIA.”

There are 2 strands to this:
1. will HTML5 allow ARIA to be used in HTML5 and be conforming, short answer for most of ARIA I think yes. For some of the ARIA features that duplicate HTML5 features,probably not, this will be an issue until those native HTML5 features are supported by Assistive Tech.
2. Will HTML5 incorporate native features that do away with the need for ARIA, in some cases yes and other cases no. There has been little or no discussion of inclusion of ARIA features such as live regions, and doubt that they will be included. Will be happy to be proved wrong.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:29:55 +0000

Crikey, Jared – that’s a real mess. I didn’t know that.

Let’s hope Microsoft makes the tweak that Aaron suggests.

By: Jared Smith

Jared Smith — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:09:30 +0000

To me, it’s a bit silly to talk about this level of adoption when we can’t even get Microsoft to support it correctly in IE8 – http://accessgarage.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/legacy-defeats-consistency-in-ie-8s-web-20-accessibility-effort/

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for everything you talk about, but if Microsoft continues their whacked out plan, developers will be left in a conundrum that makes wide-spread adoption very difficult.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:59:46 +0000

Steve, I hope that HTML 5 will adopt all the important features of ARIA.

Are people on the lists suggesting it?

By: steve faulkner

steve faulkner — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:58:18 +0000

Great to hear that Anne is demoing live regions at the ajax experience conference.

bruce wrote:
“it’s the only game in town to add the necessary semantics to lovable old HTML 4 until HTML 5 is widely implemented.”

Even when HTML5 is widely implemented there will still be a role for ARIA in HTML5 as many important features of ARIA (such as live regions, the labelledby and describedby properties) are not included within HTML5 as it is currently specced, we can hope that will change…

It is also good to rememebr that ARIA can be used in conjunction with other languages such as XUL and SVG and others, not only (X)HTML.

bruce wrote:
“that new semantics like ARIA don’t validate against the old HTML specs.”

this is an issue that I have been wondering about, i have discussed the possibility with Henri Sivonen of validator.nu validating HTML 4 + ARIA, but he is not keen on the idea. There is also the issue of what would constitute a ‘valid’ HTML4+ARIA document. Henri’s implementation of ARIA in HTML5 integration is purely experimental based on his ideas (most of which i think are well thought out) of what and how ARIA should be allowed in HTML5. No such integration rules have been put forward for HTML4.

What i would like to see is an agnostic ARIA syntax checker that can be used to test ARIA code against any host language. I don’t know how practical that is.

@David Storey, the W3C HTML5 validator does not currently support HTML5+ARIA validation