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Re: ARIA landmark roles

for

From: Steve Faulkner
Date: Mar 1, 2012 1:57PM

Hi Rick,

>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 …?

best is to leave them in as Sarah said.

the fact they don't validate means nothing apart from the validator throws
errors. things will either work on not work in the browser regardless of
the doctype you use.

>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.
they

this info may be useful: http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/appendices#xhtml_dtd

validators will probably not be updated to allow ARIA support on XHTML and
definitely not for earlier versions of HTML even though they can be used
without any ill effect. Browsers do not care what the doctype is as far as
processing of ARIA.

if possible move to using the HTML5 doctype:

<!DOCTYPE html>

this will solve your ARIA problems. (note: the W3C validator has not yet
fully implemented the ARIA rule set)

regards
stevef

On 29 February 2012 15:41, Rick Hill < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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
>
>
>