wordpress - The purpose of the "role" attribute I see on the theme files -

What is the purpose of the "role" feature in WP themes?

For example, in the WP3 default theme we are in it's footer.php

I searched for the string "contentinfo" and found that it's default Only event in theme folder

What is its purpose? How is this used?

role is an XHTML feature that is used to identify the page The context of elements on

You can read more about it.

To provide your specific answer, the search bar will also render with a role = "search" on a WordPress site.

Question, role = "contentinfo" "Meta information about the page or content on the entire page" identifies.

The role characteristic can be used by other applications (i.e. screen readers) to determine the purpose of the elements on the page. This element gives a strong meaning to things by the obvious names used for the ID (which is not codified in any way).