Proposal: New native <rating> element for semantic reviews and interactive scores

[GrappinoRoot]

What is the issue with the HTML Standard?

Description

I would like to propose a new native HTML element: <rating>.

Star ratings and review scores are among the most common UI components on modern e-commerce, media, and booking websites. However, HTML currently lacks a native way to represent or input these values. Developers are forced to build complex workarounds using hidden radio buttons, CSS hacks (~ selectors), or heavy JavaScript components.

A native <rating> element would provide a clean, declarative, and standardized way to handle both read-only scores and interactive inputs without any external code.

Proposed Syntax

<!-- Read-only mode (e.g., product review averages) -->
<rating value="4.3" max="5"></rating>

<!-- Interactive mode for forms -->
<rating name="user-score" value="0" max="5" interactive></rating>

Attributes

• value (required): A decimal number representing the current score.
• max (optional): The maximum number of stars/points. Defaults to 5.
• interactive (optional): A boolean attribute. If present, it allows users to click/tap to change the value (behaving like a form input).
• step (optional): Specifies the granularity of the value (e.g., 0.5 for half-stars). Defaults to 1.

Why this is needed (Key Problems Solved)

1. Extreme Simplicity: Developers can implement a fully functional star-rating system with a single line of pure HTML, eliminating third-party JS plugins and complex CSS.
2. Native Accessibility (A11y): Screen readers struggle with custom star components. A native <rating> element would automatically expose the correct semantics to the accessibility tree, reading out "Rating: 4.3 out of 5" naturally.
3. SEO Optimization: Search engines can immediately index product scores directly from the HTML markup without relying on fragile regex parsing or mandatory JSON-LD boilerplate.