[whatwg] article/section/details naming/definition problems

[Jeremy Keith]

Henri asked:
> do you think role=article is a legitimate and useful feature in ARIA?

Pretty useful but not *as* useful as some of the biggies e.g. search,  
navigation, contentinfo, and all the roles to do with interaction.

> Do you accept the notion that ARIA should become syntactically  
> obsolete over time so that its semantics are natively available in  
> HTML proper? (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2009AprJun/0031.html 
>  )

Now that's a big question. :-)

If that is the one of the goals of HTML5 then aren't there going to be  
lots of existing role values that won't be covered by HTML?  
role="article" would probably be the least of them.

But, even accepting that ARIA roles should be obsoleted by HTML,  
that's not the same as being obsoleted by HTML *elements*. It's still  
possible to specify that a <section> is of a particular type (e.g.  
article) without necessarily creating a new element for it. Otherwise  
we'd have to create <password>, <checkbox>, <radio> elements, etc.  
instead of using <input type="">.

So an answer of "yes" to your question doesn't mean that every current  
ARIA role needs a corresponding distinct element in HTML.

Yes.

-- 
Jeremy Keith

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