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I'm fairly confused about what default ARIA roles UAs may assign to elements not explicitly listed in the ARIA section, e.g. "html", "head", "body", elements inside "head", "img" with non-empty "alt", and "i". (See also the discussion in Bug 10841) If an element is not listed anywhere in the section does that mean it has no default role? There's a list of "elements in HTML [that] have no default role and no restrictions on what roles can be applied to those elements", but why are (say) "i" and "img" with non-empty "alt" missing from both the tables and the list? The spec says: "User agents may apply different defaults than those described in this section in order to expose the semantics of HTML elements in a manner more fine-grained than possible with the above definitions." Is this supposed to mean that they can map elements to platform accessibility APIs in ways more specific than currently covered by ARIA? Or that they could apply more complex heuristics than the spec's tables and lists to determining which of the current default ARIA roles to apply to an element? If /that's/ the case, then it should be made clearer that the default roles and restrictions tabulated and listed are merely informative suggestions. Would it be possible to clarify this?
adding to ARIA super bug
(In reply to comment #0) > I'm fairly confused about what default ARIA roles UAs may assign to elements > not explicitly listed in the ARIA section, e.g. "html", "head", "body", > elements inside "head", "img" with non-empty "alt", and "i". (See also the > discussion in Bug 10841) The defaults for anything not listed in the HTML spec are left up to ARIA, which I believe either leaves it up to the UAs or says that there's no default role (same as <span>). > If an element is not listed anywhere in the section does that mean it has no > default role? If nothing gives it a default role, then it has no default role. > There's a list of "elements in HTML [that] have no default role > and no restrictions on what roles can be applied to those elements", but why > are (say) "i" and "img" with non-empty "alt" missing from both the tables and > the list? No idea why "i" isn't listed, looks like a copy/paste error. The list in general is kind of a lie, though, because for example any element with accesskey="" can end up having a role. I think I might just remove the list, it's caused more confusion so far than it has aided. > The spec says: "User agents may apply different defaults than those described > in this section in order to expose the semantics of HTML elements in a manner > more fine-grained than possible with the above definitions." Is this supposed > to mean that they can map elements to platform accessibility APIs in ways more > specific than currently covered by ARIA? I think I'll remove that paragraph. It's from a time where the table wasn't as detailed. I haven't made any changes yet but I shall remove the two paragraphs mentioend above when I next look at this bug (I'm in the middle of some other edits right now, but Maciej asked me to comment ASAP).
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Accepted Change Description: see diff given below Rationale: Clarified confusing paragraphs by removing them altogether, as per comment 2.
Checked in as WHATWG revision r5567. Check-in comment: Remove confusing paragraphs http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=5566&to=5567
added to HTML WG Issue http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/129
The bug-triage sub-team thinks this is important, but does not require the attention of the whole task force as the ARIA mapping sub-team is able to deal with it and take the appropriate steps.