Henri Sivonen has been working on issues of ARIA in HTML5 Integration from the point of view of document conformance, as part of this work he’s prototyped ARIA-in-HTML5 conformance checking in the Validator.nu (X)HTML5 Validator.
Roger Hudson a friend and esteemed colleague, has taken time to write a thought provoking essay: The Evolving Web - A Pace Layering view of the development of the Web and the W3C.
In JAWS, Window-Eyes and Character References Jason Kiss provides a detailed study of how the major Windows screen readers announce (or don’t) character references.
Making public statements based on limited knowledge of an assistive technology and with little understanding of how it is used, can lead to incorrect conclusions and poor implementations.
Easy ARIA Tips from Marco Zehe: Easy ARIA Tip #1: Using aria-required and Easy ARIA tip #2: aria-labelledby and aria-describedby