Re: 48-Hour Consensus Call: ARIA-DescribedAT & Longdesc

Matthew Turvey wrote:
> On 1 April 2012 14:53, Geoff Freed<geoff_freed@wgbh.org>  wrote:
>>> - Support for longdesc in browsers and AT is poor and has been so for
>>> many years.
>> GF:
>> True, but there *is* support, and it isn't new-- it has been available for
>> years.  Ask anyone who uses JAWS (anecdotally speaking, the most popular
>> screen reader in use today) in combination with IE or Firefox (anecdotally
>> speaking, the two most popular browsers in use today).  Better yet, try it
>> yourself.  It works, and it works every time.
>
> I don't think that's entirely accurate. There's at least some evidence
> that even JAWS users sometimes have difficulty accessing longdesc
> links. See:
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/LongdescZeroEdit#Problems_with_Longdesc

You should not infer a correlation between difficulty accessing content 
with a lack of usefulness. This is a dangerous path. Any difficulty is 
more to do with implementation of the idea rather than its inception. It 
makes sense to me to retain @longdesc and improve it. I don't agree with 
the year zero approach. I don't agree with making an element 'sort of' 
accessible to everyone while drastically reducing its usefulness for the 
original target audience (blind of vision impaired users in this case).

My 2 cents.

Josh