I have begun doing dojo accessibility testing on a web application and have noticed that elements have both a role and a wairole attribute that seem to be the same value.
After much searching I have been unable to understand the difference between the two. Can anyone explain this?
I’m not sure whether this is a full explanation, but the
roleattribute in the now abandoned XHTML2 had a much wider use than just the WAI-ARIA roles that are allowed for theroleattribute in HTML5.The was some suggestion ~2006/2007 that to avoid confusion, the attribute in HTML5 should be called
wairole, and it may be that Dojo is just trying to cover both bases.See http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2006-August/007150.html for one place where the
wairolename was suggested.