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

On 2 April 2012 08:45, Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie> wrote:

> 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.

My point was in response to Geoff's "It works, and it works every
time" comment. In my opinion this whole idea is fundamentally flawed
because it requires a different activation method to a normal link,
which will inevitably be less easy and intuitive to use.

> 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).

No one has suggested drastically reducing anything, so let's try to
keep the silly hyperbole out of this discussion. What has been
suggested is making long descriptions accessible to everyone who needs
them, right now, including SR users who cannot currently access
longdesc.

Since aria-describedby allows pointing to a link on the page, do we
even need aria-describedat?

--- Begin quote ---
Because we are confident that aria-describedby will be supported by
assistive technologies at least as well as longdesc when HTML5 becomes
a W3C Recommendation:

IF aria-describedby is incorporated in HTML5 and aria-describedby
allows pointing to long text alternatives that are off of the page (by
pointing to a link on the page)

THEN we believe it is acceptable to obsolete longdesc in HTML5.

RATIONALE: It is important that a long text mechanism exist which is
capable of pointing off page. Long descriptions are often too lengthy
and detailed to be included on the main page. If aria-describedby can
point off page (by pointing to a link on the page) then it would
remove any need for continued support of LONGDESC which is not widely
used by authors at this time. (NOTE: it is understood that
aria-describedby cannot point off page directly.)
--- End quote ---

http://www.w3.org/2009/06/Text-Alternatives-in-HTML5

-Matt

Received on Monday, 2 April 2012 12:21:50 UTC