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Reference Target for Cross-Root ARIA
After recieving 82 👍 12 ❤️ and 9 🚀 emojis from last year's interop proposal (#1011), I'm once again asking for Reference Target to be considered for Interop 2027. It solves (and doesn't solve) some long standing issues with cross-root associations as outlined in the Edge Demo for Reference Target.
- Reference Target has an Intent to Ship in Chromium 152
- All browsers have an implementation with passing tests behind a flag (WPT.fyi)
- There's a community attempt at polyfilling the behavior: https://westbrook.github.io/reference-target-polyfill/
While I personally wish that "Attribute forwarding" as called out in the Edge demo could be reconsidered, I think anything we could do to solve this gap would be a huge leap forward in component authoring.
Discussion on GitHub (1)
Having spent time struggling with the lack of an API in this area, writing proposals/specs in this area, gathering agreement in this area, working to get this API covered in previous interop years, attempting to polyfill this area, I'd say it's about time that browsers put their money where there mouth is in so far as supporting accessibility/performance and its delivery to the priority of constituencies. All people should be empowered to interact with complex content on the internet, not matter their requirements when interacting with that content and developers should be empowered with API to ensure that if those requirements revolve accessibility that they are able to deliver content that makes this true. Please add this to Interop 2027. 🙇🏼♂️
Note on the polyfill, these relationships are ridiculously hard to guarnatee outside of native support, and polyfilling them even more intrusive on other work that might be the main goal of the interfaces they might be leveraged in. Learn more about the scope of current polyfilling efforts, or by checking out how polyfilling interacts with various popular web frameworks/renderers.