Shane,

If you are saying that the "role" can be used by anybody for anything
they want you will effectively generate significant disadvantage for the
accessible community. A property that needs to be supported by browsers
and other systems to help the assistive technology tools will be so
flooded with other uses/misuses that there will be negative impact on
those who need to rely on that functionality to use web content.

I hope that the meaning of roles remains exactly as it is worded below
and is not changed to be defined as "all things for all people".



Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: www-html-request@w3.org [mailto:www-html-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Shane McCarron
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 10:08 PM
To: Peter Krantz
Cc: www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: Design question about formats based on XHTML 2


No, I think you are correct that the role attribute is the way to go.  
Just define a taxonomy for roles in your namespace.  However, I agree
that the text in the description of the role attribute is misleading.  I
will effect repairs.

Peter Krantz wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> In a project we are looking at XHTML 2 as the foundation for a 
> document format in the legal domain. XHTML 2 is a great starting point

> as it is a generic document format covering most of our markup needs.
>
> In our domain we would like to express that some section elements are 
> of a specific type. The type belongs to a namespace. The function of 
> the section element is the same but we would like to be able to 
> extract sections of this specific type.
>
> What would be a good way to markup our sections? The role attribute 
> sounds like a candidate but looking at the XHTML2 specification it 
> does not feel right ("It is used by applications and assistive 
> technologies to determine the purpose of UI widgets."). Is the class 
> attribute the way to go?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Peter

-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com