History of changes to WAI-ARIA Roles

This document tracks changes made to public working drafts of the Roles for Accessible Rich Internet Applications.

19 October 2007

Publication of the 19 October 2007 Public Working Draft. Changes (note many of these changes affect descendant roles of the changed role as well):

• Changed inheritance of roles in the taxonomy
  • Changed list to inherit from region
  • Reversed inheritance of checkbox and checkboxtristate
  • Change menubar and toolbar to inherit from group instead of menu
  • grid inherits from section and comples
  • gridcell inherits from section and widget
  • Change grid and gridcell to inherit from section and widget for gridcell, complex for grid
  • Change rowheader and columnheader to inherit from gridcell and sectionhead
  • treeitem and menuitem roles added inheritance from listitem role
  • option removed inheritance from listitem
  • button remove inheritance from link
  • status added inheritance from region
  • application changed to inherit from region
  • menuitem changed inheritance to option
  • menu changed inheritance to select and list
  • listbox added inheritance from list"
  • marquee added inheritance from section
  • progressbar changed inheritance status
  • select changed inheritance from list to group
  • separator changed inheritance to structure
• Created new roles
  • structure as ancestor for document structure roles
  • composite as ancestor for roles that should be treated both as widgets and as document structure
  • timer, inherits from status
  • templateid
  • treegrid, inherits from grid and tree
  • row, inherits from group
  • tr, inherits from group
  • heading, inherits from sectionhead and supports property level
• Removed roles
  • table, tr, td, and th (covered by grid, row, gridcell, rowheader, columnheader)
  • textfield and textarea (combined into textbox which is made non-abstract)
  • secret (replaced by secret property)
  • breadcrumbs
• Added new states and properties to roles
  • Add autocomplete to combobox
  • Add level to directory, region, grid, row
  • Add disabled to row
  • Add controls to group
  • Add expanded to gridcell
  • Add selected to row
  • Add secret and multiline to textbox
  • Move controls to widget and region roles
  • Move invalid and required to input role
  • Add atomic, busy, channel, live, and relevant to structure
• Removed states and properties from roles
  • Remove activedescendent from grid, status
  • Remove selected from rowheader and columnheader
  • Remove readonly to checkbox, list, spinbutton
• imgroup becomes img, inheritance changes to section
• Add “childrenArePresentational” attribute to roles, applies to button, image, progressbar, separator, slider
• Change RDF property "nameref" to "namefrom"
• Made accessible name required on the following roles: alertdialog , application , button , checkbox , columnheader, combobox, dialog, document, grid, gridcell, heading, img, link, listbox, listitem, log, marquee, menu, menuitem, menuitemcheckbox, menuitemradio, option, progressbar, radio, radiogroup, rowheader, slider, spinbutton, tab, textbox, timer, tooltip, tree, treegrid, treeitem
• Expanded definitions of terms
• Removed section on role extensibility, mechanism is to be undefined in this version

1 June 2007

Publication of the 1 June 2007 Public Working Draft. Changes:

• Removed tabcontainer role.
• Removed treegroup role, in favor of more general grouping.
• Added pressed role.
• Added listbox role.
• Added marquee role.
• Reorganized document and presentation of roles.
• Added concept of global states, which are applicable to all roles.
• Clarified difference between alert and alertdialog roles.
• Clarified differences amongst popups, tooltips, and descriptions. Relevant roles: tooltip, description.
• Improvements to role descriptions.
• Additional explanatory language in introductory sections.
• Added requirement that all ARIA attributes must be available from the DOM.

20 December 2006

Publication of the 20 December 2006 Public Working Draft. Changes:

• Modified the roles for application and document to need a labelledby state, except when there is a TITLE element on an HTML document, and TITLE attribute in an SVG group.
• Change states for checkbox to values, because states is ambiguous.
• Added an editorial note onto Extending Roles that they may be removed.
• Made application and document abstract roletypes.
• Made section and sectionhead non-abstract role types.
• Removed Host Language Conformance as it is not applicable.
• removed rdfs:Range from Object Property nameRef.
• For Object Property relatedConcept, changed rdfs:domain (anyURI) to rdfs:range and introduced rdfs:domain roletype.
• For Object Property scope changed rdfs:domain from #role to #roletype.
• For roletype changed rdf:resource="dc:description" to rdf:resource="&dc;description".

26 September 2006

Publication of the First Public Working Draft.