- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:54:15 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Matt Morgan-May <mattmay@adobe.com>
- Cc: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>, David Poehlman <poehlman1@comcast.net>, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>, Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>, "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no>, James Graham <jgraham@opera.com>, Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>, Steve Axthelm <steveax@pobox.com>, Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, Simon Pieters <simonp@opera.com>, HTMLWG <public-html@w3.org>, "wai-xtech@w3.org" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, "wai-liaison@w3.org" <wai-liaison@w3.org>, "janina@rednote.net" <janina@rednote.net>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, W3C WAI Protocols & Formats <w3c-wai-pf@w3.org>
On Thu, 26 Feb 2009, Matt Morgan-May wrote: > > Two points: > > 1) Then @alt should also be presented visually, no? From the research > I've seen, there's more good @alt content than good @summary content, so > it'd make more sense to present that visually. The point of alt="" text is to replace images, not augment them, whereas summary="", or <caption> in HTML5, augments tables, it doesn't replace them. Note also that HTML5 does in fact expect visual browsers to replace <img> elements with their alt="" text in the rendering when the image is broken. So I believe we are being consistent here. > No, I'm really not. I don't see how my statement would be parsed that > way. I mean to point out a logical fallacy, to wit: removing a feature > intended for non-visual users somehow aids accessibility. It does not > follow. We're not just removing it, we're replacing it with something that helps more users (<caption>). > 1) @summary is content that is restricted non-visual users, and our > design principles dictate that it should be available to all users. > > 2) @summary is alternate content for visual information, and our design > principles dictate that it should be presented to non-visual users. I don't agree with either of these statements. My position is just that there is data showing that summary="" as designed both fails to help disabled users (by being mostly bad data when used) and hurts non-disabled users (by causing there to be information hidden from them when the attribute _is_ used in a way that helps disabled users). Thus, if our goal is to improve accessibility, we need to do _something_ to improve matters. The current proposal is to use <caption> instead of summary="", which should both improve the quality of the accessibility aids (since authors will _see_ their bad summaries and remove them if they're bad) and the make them universally accessible (since <caption> is media-independent). The other proposal, namely to show summary="" to everyone, doesn't work because browser vendors wouldn't agree to showing the current values, since they are so widely found to be ugly. > When @summary was removed, accessibility to non-visual users was > reduced. I believe that is inaccurate. Existing pages with summary="" aren't affected. AT tools are still expected to support the summary="" attribute, and validators are expected to not report the presence of summary="" as a serious problem. New pages that use <caption> wouldn't be any less accessible either. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Thursday, 26 February 2009 22:54:57 UTC