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

On 2 April 2012 17:13, Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com> wrote:

> 1. aria-describedby *doesn't* provide a particularly usable way of getting
> to a description off the page, and more importantly

In this context, putting a normal link on the image is the most usable
way of providing a long description. How can aria-describedat be made
as easy and intuitive to use as a normal link?

The advantage of using aria-describedby as an enhancement *where
required* is it still "works" in UAs that don't support ARIA, and for
users that don't know to use ARIA, and when authors use ARIA
incorrectly. As I understand it, aria-describedby was specifically
designed to point to element(s) on the page to avoid repeating the
same mistakes that made longdesc a disaster:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Sep/0596.html

> 2. aria-describedby flattens everything to plain text, which is only
> suitable for some of the use cases.

See http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#Descriptions_external

-Matt