What is WAI-ARIA intended to do?
The ARIA initiative seeks to make accessibility possible for web devices – often referred to as “widgets” – that are developed with Ajax, DHTML, and other current technologies. Several basic Javascript widgets are well-known, commonly used, and yet conspicuously missing from HTML 4 today. To ensure that accessibility not be a barrier to innovation, the ARIA intiative is working to incorporate accessibility into these newer presentation techniques.