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Those five concepts are not random, they go from the assistive technologies world: most if not all desktop APIs use these terms. Agreed, the state concept (or

Those five concepts are not random, they go from the assistive technologies world: most if not all desktop APIs use these terms. Agreed, the state concept (or even role concept) can be technically mapped into attributes, but I keep using them just to stick closer to existing terminology. When it comes to ARIA, all browsers map ARIA taxonomies into desktop APIs, and thus I think it's fair to say ARIA is mapped into those concepts as well. But this post wasn't an attempt to define accessibility concepts as such. It was rather about answering a question, whether a large set of accessibility problems can be solved, if the web came with a technology that provides greater access to express semantics to web devs.

dfabulich 8y ago
No, those problems can’t be solved this way. Your taxonomy may seem more “expressive” to you, but your five concepts are too vague to build a useful screen-reader around. Web developers won’t use the concepts consistently; screen readers won’t interpret them consistently. None of the relevant vendors are on board, because they’ve all considered a simpler taxonomy and rejected the idea, in favor of a richer, more complex system that can actually be implemented.
- alekssrkv 8y ago
  Having these concepts exposed to the web doesn't repeal the necessary of standardization, i.e. both web developers and AT vendors has to stay in agreement on content semantics they operate with, but it will make the agreement process simpler than it's now, because it doesn't require implementation from browsers for each and every new feature. Also it will enable experimenting on the web, where web developers and AT vendors can try new things before stuffing them into standards, which should boost the accessible web.
  - threatofrain 8y ago
    I think people have been moving away from the semantic organization because trying to properly dimensionalize the web has been so fraught.

dfabulich 8y ago

No, those problems can’t be solved this way. Your taxonomy may seem more “expressive” to you, but your five concepts are too vague to build a useful screen-reader around. Web developers won’t use the concepts consistently; screen readers won’t interpret them consistently. None of the relevant vendors are on board, because they’ve all considered a simpler taxonomy and rejected the idea, in favor of a richer, more complex system that can actually be implemented.

alekssrkv 8y ago
Having these concepts exposed to the web doesn't repeal the necessary of standardization, i.e. both web developers and AT vendors has to stay in agreement on content semantics they operate with, but it will make the agreement process simpler than it's now, because it doesn't require implementation from browsers for each and every new feature. Also it will enable experimenting on the web, where web developers and AT vendors can try new things before stuffing them into standards, which should boost the accessible web.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  I think people have been moving away from the semantic organization because trying to properly dimensionalize the web has been so fraught.