Re: Helping Canvas Tag Be Accessible

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:14:34 +0200, Laura Carlson<laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> I think we ought to study use cases a bit more and figure out what
>>> authors actually want.
>> I've put some in the Wiki:
>> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/AddedElementCanvas#head-c43887ef27c016a20e53d16718ab16a398b6899d
>
> That's great, though what I meant was something that answers questions like:
>
>   * What is the application?
>   * What is<canvas>  used for?
>   * Is it accessible now?
>   * Is there a better technology?
>   * How can we make it accessible?

Some other questions include:

* If it is interactive, what kind user interaction is required?
* Which alternative input methods are not adequately supported, and what 
kind of users are affected and how?
* Are there existing features available in HTML that could be utilised 
to provide any accessibility hooks?  (e.g. the "Bespin Pie" example uses 
an image map to provide access to buttons).  What are the limitations 
with these techniques?

> E.g. to take cufón which is admittedly somewhat simple:
>
>   * What is the application?
>       Allows font embedding on pages without using Flash.
>   * What is<canvas>  used for?
>       Drawing the characters.
>   * Is it accessible now?
>       Maybe. (It claims to be an alternative to sIFR so is
>       probably just for simple replacements.)

I'm not entirely familiar with it, but I believe it uses simple 
alternative text, either as a child of the canvas element or as a 
sibling, but hidden using common CSS image replacement techniques.

>   * Is there a better technology?
>       Yes: Web Fonts.
>   * How can we make it accessible?
>       Probably already accessible or pages can switch to Web Fonts.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Thursday, 30 July 2009 23:04:10 UTC