WAI-ARIA 1.0 and HTML 5.0 approached completion at roughly the same time and influenced each other's feature sets. However, WAI-ARIA 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation first. HTML 5.0 underwent further modification, plus work began on HTML 5.1. To best support authoring, it is important that WAI-ARIA provides coverage for the features used in HTML 5.
Text alternatives in WAI-ARIA can be complicated because of the interplay of a variety of ARIA and host language features. Although there are several features that impact text alternatives, features to satisfactorily provide rich extended descriptions were not available. The HTML native feature longdesc has been removed from the core specification and, while available in an extension specification, does not meet the needs of some implementers. WAI-ARIA 1.1 is intended to close this feature gap.
WAI-ARIA 1.0 provides a set of features that map common rich internet application semantics, fairly comprehensively, to platform accessibility APIs. Since its completion, however, some missing features have been identified as the web has evolved and to better align with HTML 5. Examples of these include: error message support; the addition of a figure role; the addition of aria-current; the addition of a switch role for mobile devices; and the leveraging of native host language semantics as host languages leverage ARIA semantics. When critical to the accessibility of present-day web sites, these features will be provided in ARIA 1.1. Less urgent features or are deferred to ARIA 2.0.
WAI-ARIA 1.0 was not designed with extensibility in mind. Some communities have requested features, however, that would require a substantial revision of the ARIA technology to incoporate. WAI-ARIA 1.1 will allow, via process and tools, extensions that inhert all the features of the core specification plus add new ones. Draft procedures for extensions are available.
WAI-ARIA is designed using a taxonomy of roles, with states and properties, to describe coverage of its feature set. Adherence to the taxonomy has resulted in relationships among features that are not always well understood by users, or seen as necessary. The taxonomy, while still used as a design tool, will be removed from the core specification. Features driven by the taxonomy will be normalized to better reflect their actual intent.
The following people contributed to the development of this document.