Re: no-title CP - remarks

Steve Faulkner, Wed, 11 May 2011 16:42:43 +0100:

>>I'm not open to act as if I agree if I don't agree: what I have said in
>>the CP I can also say in a poll, and the chairs would then have to
>>consider it.
> 
> Nobody is asking you, what I am asking of the group (a11y 
> taskforce) is if there is consensus to move ahead with the
> proposal i have provided or after considereing your proposal
> the group thinks other wise.

It is fair enough to ask the group like that. But I feel that when you 
threat to withdraw your proposal unless you have your way, then you put 
pressure on me to withdraw my own CP:

>>> [...] If the group wishes to reconsider this
>>> in light of Leif's arguments then the move to re-open the decision
>>> would be defunct and I would withdraw my proposal to re-open.

Otherwise, what I say in my CP I say because I don't feel that the 
chairs would be convinced by your CP. I feel that the argument you make 
that support for @title is decreasing is extremely far from the truth 
(the truth is the opposite), and hence I doubt the chairs will agree 
with your arugment. However, it might well be that chair agree with you 
- I have miscalculated them before. And also, if it is not the chairs 
you want to convince, then it perhaps doesn't matter. Likewise, if you 
are unconvinced, then you should of course pursue what you are 
convinced about.

Meanwhile, we are seeking to put @longdesc into the spec - a feature 
for which there *isn't* device independent access, as much as I have 
gotten it. (Now you will of course reply that the issue is @title/@alt 
and not @longdesc, but nevertheless.) And I agree strongly with Laura 
in having put into the proposed spec text that UAs should provide 
device independent access to @longdesc. Can we ask anything less? 
Should we postpone putting @longdesc into the spec because vendors 
haven't promised to provide device independent access to @longdesc?

Likewise, if there is a general problem with @title w.r.t. device 
independent access, then we need to put in HTML5 that UA must provide 
device independent access to @title - if vendors are unwilling to 
provide such support, then then entire feature must be deprecated. 
Hence, I'm not comfortable with using this Decision as an opportunity 
to spread general ideas about the inaccessibility of @title (as told 
elsewhere, on your job blog you don't even think authors should use 
<abbr title="">). If @title is that problematic, then we should be 
serious about deprecating @title as such. Can't the @alt issue be 
argued without antagonism towards @title?

Therefore, my CP focus on other problems with the the Decision. And, 
just as Judy in her text on figcaption, I take myself the liberty to 
not plainly accept the map that the chairs have drawn as correct: 
things can be weighted differently from what they did. Therefore I 
bring in my reasoning with regard to negative effects of the generator 
exception into the title/alt issue.

PS: Under all this I also sense that our disagreement about whether 
@alt="" should be equal to role="presentation", plays a role. At least 
it does for myself. After all, the only time you bless the use of 
@title, is when the image also has an empty @alt and the IMG thus - per 
your reading of how it should be and in agreement with Ian but against 
what ARIA says - is considered presentational. Really, we should solve 
the question about wether empty @alt equals role=presentation before 
this title/alt issue!

PPS: Even if HTML5 adopts your CP, it is still - as long as the view 
that an empty @alt equals role=presentation -  still possible to fake 
it: Just insert an empty @alt and fill the @title with content. Voila. 
Then you and HTML5 will consider it valid. Whereas ARIA supporting AT 
as well as all non-blind users will still get access to both the image 
and its title. Best way to serve everyone?
-- 
Leif H Silli

Received on Wednesday, 11 May 2011 18:27:16 UTC