WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: ARIA landmark roles

for

From: Bourne, Sarah (ITD)
Date: Mar 1, 2012 1:21PM

Rick,

You have to put users ahead of code perfectionists. Use WAI-ARIA if it helps your users, and just explain to people that their validator is out of date. The validators will catch up eventually!

sb

Sarah E. Bourne
Director of Assistive Technology &
Mass.Gov Chief Technology Strategist
Information Technology Division
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.mass.gov/itd


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Rick Hill
Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 6:41 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] ARIA landmark roles

I implemented basic Aria landmark roles in our CMS (banner, navigation, main, contentinfo). Of course, since all our templates are using XHTML, these elements don't validate. So:

I can deal with the verbal abuse of these element not validating as long as I can explain they make the site more accessible and that they don't validate because the validators aren't yet Araia aware for XHTML. So, is this OK? If I took them out, the pages would be squeaky clean. I'm trying to ignore the nagging urge to be validator compliant by taking these out.

I'm not keen on using Javascript to insert these since this seems like just a way to get around the validator.

So, what's the current take on this? Leave them and tell folks who ask that we know what we're doing and its for the best or pull them out and stay valid until the validators catch up or ...?
---------------------------------------
Rick Hill, Web CMS Administrator
University Communications, UC Davis