Re: WebKit and GNOME

[Eitan Isaacson <eitan ascender com>]

On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 16:37 -0400, David Bolter wrote:
> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > 4) Accessibility. This is only implemented in the Mac port currently.  
> > We are moving the core accessibility code to be cross-platform, which  
> > should make it fairly straightforward to hook it up to ATK or other  
> > accessibility APIs. Sometimes ARIA is mentioned in the context of  
> > accessibility - this is an interesting technology for future web apps,  
> > but I believe basic accessibility integration for web content is a  
> > higher priority.
> >   
> 
> This wording "Sometimes ARIA is mentioned in the context of
> accessibility - this is an interesting technology for future web apps"
> doesn't seem quite right to me. ARIA enabled browsers such as Firefox
> provide access to ARIA enabled DHTML applications today. Opera and IE8
> are adding support today. Google is putting ARIA into its web applications.
> 

I agree with David. ARIA is becoming a major component in any accessible
web application. It's not something in the distant future. It would be
premature to crown webkit as the GNOME engine for all purposes until
this is properly addressed. Nonetheless, for basic document viewing,
like Yelp, Webkit could be a good solution, providing it has accessible
structured document support.