title: Using aria-sort in validated HTML5
body: <p>Assuming a static HTML table, such as:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;table&gt;
      &lt;thead&gt;
          &lt;tr&gt;
              &lt;th scope="col" aria-sort="none"&gt;&lt;a href="..."&gt;Name&amp;#xA0;&lt;span title="Sort"&gt;&amp;#9650;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt;
              &lt;th scope="col" aria-sort="ascending"&gt;&lt;a href="..."&gt;Score&amp;#xA0;&lt;span title="Ascending"&gt;&amp;#9650;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/th&gt;
          &lt;/tr&gt;
      &lt;/thead&gt;
      &lt;tbody&gt;
          &lt;tr&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;C&lt;/td&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;
          &lt;/tr&gt;
          &lt;tr&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;A&lt;/td&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;5&lt;/td&gt;
          &lt;/tr&gt;
          &lt;tr&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;B&lt;/td&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;9&lt;/td&gt;
          &lt;/tr&gt;
      &lt;/tbody&gt;
  &lt;/table&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Would the use of <code>aria-sort</code> be appropriate (for when UA's that support it)?</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/states_and_properties#aria-sort" rel="noreferrer">http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/states_and_properties#aria-sort</a></p>
  
  <p>I believe this could be useful, but the W3C validator currently requires a <code>role="columnheader"</code> on the <code>&lt;th scope="col"&gt;</code>, which is kind of redundant, as it already implies a <code>th[scope="col"]</code>:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#columnheader" rel="noreferrer">http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#columnheader</a></p>
  
  <p>And once you start specifying that, you also need to set a role for everything up to the <code>&lt;table role="grid"&gt;</code>... which is fine if your not using appropriate tags.</p>