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In email sent 26 February 2009 on behalf of the W3C WAI Protocols and Formats WG, and available at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-schema-comments/2009JanMar/0149.html Janina Sajka wrote: PF was particularly concerned with the new symbol spaces feature [2]. The reason this raised a flag is that there have been discussions in PFWG about using name spaces for the aria state and property attributes. Our conclusion was to not do so; that using "aria-" was sufficient (e.g., aria-checked, aria-grabbed, aria-labelledby, and so on). We see nothing in XSD symbol spaces that adversely affects our decision. PF thanks Joseph Scheuhammer <clown@utoronto.ca> and Gottfried Zimmermann <zimmermann@accesstechnologiesgroup.com> for reading the XSD 1.1 Last Call document on behalf of WAI-PF.
Speaking for myself, I understand the WAI PF WG's first comment, recorded here, as essentially saying "We don't believe there is a conflict between XSD's notion of symbol spaces and ARIA's use of the 'aria-' prefix in naming ARIA attributes; please confirm or deny." Again speaking for myself, I think the WAI PF WG is correct, there is no conflict, and the XML Schema WG should confirm that we agree there is no conflict. Some may believe that the use of string prefixes instead of namespaces is a weak method of ensuring uniqueness and that ARIA would do better to use a namespace. But we have not been asked for our advice as vocabulary designers. As a matter of specification compatibility there is no conflict here. (And even on the design side -- if namespaces are such a good way to handle things, why does the Namespaces spec reserve a literal prefix for itself instead of using its own mechanism?)
At the weekly telcon on 2009-04-10, the WG discussed this issue. The WG agrees with Michael Sperberg-McQueen that there is no conflict between XSD's use of symbol spaces and ARIA's use of the "aria-" prefix. The WG also agrees that ARIA's previous decision not to raise an issue with regard to symbol spaces was the correct decision, and the WG further wishes to thank ARIA for having given our draft a careful reading. Best regards on behalf of the XML Schema WG. N.B. individual WG members may wish to comment on the use (or not) of namespaces in regard to the "aria-" prefix. This response does not endorse use of such a prefix.