Re: HTML5 should define a global attribute that contains user-friendly help or hint text from Joshue O Connor on 2011-08-07 (public-html-a11y@w3.org from August 2011)

From: Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>
Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2011 09:05:19 +0100
To: Greg Lowney <gcl-0039@access-research.org>
CC: public-html-a11y@w3.org
Message-ID: <4E3E473F.3000003@cfit.ie>

Hi Greg,

>    Title: HTML5 should define a global attribute that contains
> user-friendly help or hint text
> 
>    There are cases where help text or hints should be available to any
> user, but are not appropriate to present by default to the average user.
[...]

I don't think i would be a fan of this idea. The spec is fully of
attributes etc that can provide supplementary info to 'average' users as
well as PWDs using AT. There may be no need to add an extra attribute,
but tweak the way UAs deal with/present existing structures. I agree
that the title attribute is in danger of getting overloaded. It is going
from - 'dont use the title attribute as AT doesn't support it' to ' we
don't have a structure for x - lets put it into the title attribute'. I
do think this latter issue could indicate a semantic gap in HTML 5 of
some type.

Cheers

Josh

Received on Sunday, 7 August 2011 08:01:18 UTC