Re: WebKit and GNOME

[Joseph Scheuhammer <clown utoronto ca>]

1. Using DHTML to create desktop UI's is here, today, now.  It has 
become very popular.  Nonetheless, it is inaccessible because the 
semantics of the markup is either wrong or neutral with respect to the 
UI it is encoding.  A specific example is where a <div> element can be a 
menu, a menu item, a combobox, a page tab, a slider, or any number of 
other UI widgets.  Knowing that it's a <div> doesn't tell you much.

2. ARIA is the W3C draft standard that deals with the semantics of 
DHTML-as-UI.  There are other similar efforts (e.g., microformats), but 
they haven't the same traction.

3. FireFox, Opera, and the dojo JavaScript toolkit already implement 
ARIA.  jQuery, IE8, and Adobe are in the process of doing so.

> > So far as I know, there isn't any major web app yet that is already  
> > using ARIA. I would appreciate correction on this front if I have  
> > missed anything.
> >   
>   
> Sure. I'm not sure what classifies as a major web app, but how about 
> Google reader?
> http://www.google.com/reader/view/?ui=axs
>   
On the assumption that there is a major web app that is using DHTML for 
its UI, the issue is not whether it is already using ARIA; the issue is 
how can that webapp be made accessible if it isn't using ARIA?

--
;;;;joseph

'This is not war -- this is pest control!'
     - "Doomsday", Dalek Leader -