Re: Call for consensus - longdesc to CR

It is not news that there are strong opinions concerning both longdesc
and ARIA-DescribedAt. However, it would be best for us all to carefully
double-check, and even document our assertions about the positions of
entities other than our own before representing them categorically in
public email.

Furthermore, it is arguable, and I do assert that the DescribedAt
addition to ARIA-1.1 did indeed have consensus at the time it was
introduced. Need I remind everyone that consensus is NOT unanimity
according to published W3C process? The definition we are called to work
with is set forth at:

http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies.html#Consensus

Janina


Michael(tm) Smith writes:
> James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>, 2014-07-25 19:21 -0700:
> 
> > As the current editor of the ARIA spec, I added @aria-describedat to the
> > ARIA 1.1 working draft because it gathered majority vote in the working
> > group, despite my objections and lack of group consensus.
> > @aria-describedat has all the same problems as @longdesc, but also breaks
> > an established and generally accepted ARIA pattern of not modifying the
> > mainstream UI of the host language. Accessibility-conscious user agent
> > developers from Mozilla and Google raised similar objections to
> > @aria-describedat.
> 
> There's something pretty odd about a decision-making process that results
> in an intended-for-accessibility feature getting added to a spec over the
> objections of the spec's own editor and over the objections of
> accessibility-conscious reps/developers from Apple, Mozilla, and Google.
> 
> Some might say it's a sign of that decision-making process being pretty
> seriously broken and in need of being replaced.
> 
>   --Mike
> 
> -- 
> Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike



-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Received on Saturday, 26 July 2014 03:05:48 UTC