Re: H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art, emoticons, and leetspeak

As a new member of this group, I guess I'll take the opportunity to enter 
the fray on this.

"”what’s wrong with the abbr example?”
Example three in H86 is <abbr title="Austin Rocks">Au5t1N r0xx0rz</abbr> 
The second part of the Leet looks to me like Rocksers -- kind of a mashup 
of rockers and scissors. I believe the originally point may have been that 
the English equivalent is not actually "Rocks" (that, or the Leet should 
be r0(k5 )

At any rate, the discussion has now moved to whether ABBR is suitable to 
use for surfacing ALT. I agree it is a hack. The Leet is not an 
abbreviation. By the same token, the second item in example 1 should also 
be removed: <abbr title="fright">=8-0</abbr>

However, I'm with Eric on two points: 1) the fact screen readers don't 
implement something by default is not a reason to not implement the 
technique if it is legitimate; 2) other folks, including those with 
cognitive disabilities, can derive benefit from forms of alternative 
information which are not historically available via the user agent alone.

In this situation, the ABBR technique is attractive because it is visually 
indicated by most user agents (as a minutely dashed underline) and 
provides an affordance via hover to expose the TITLE information to mouse 
users. So I think what is called for is for this matter to be flagged to 
the Cognitive TF so they can deal with the multiple questions involved.

Personally, I think using the TITLE as a reinforcement on most uses of ALT 
makes a lot of sense. TITLE is valid on virtually all elements, so can be 
added wherever ALT is used to expose the additional meaning to mouse 
users. My one caution is that I've found that some screen readers will 
announce both the ALT and TITLE if the strings are not identical. So that 
would need to be part of the guidance offered.

That doesn't solve the lack of strong visual affordance for the TITLE or 
the problem with keyboard users not being able to expose the value. But as 
Eric states, "While there may be a user group that isn’t helped using a 
technique, we shouldn’t rule it out for other user groups."

If I've failed to follow any etiquette of the maillist, please feel free 
to advise me privately.

Michael Gower
Senior Consultant
IBM Accessibility

1803 Douglas Street, Victoria, BC  V8T 5C3
gowerm@ca.ibm.com
voice: (250) 220-1146 * cel: (250) 661-0098 *  fax: (250) 220-8034



From:   "Eric Eggert" <ee@w3.org>
To:     "Andrew Kirkpatrick" <akirkpat@adobe.com>
Cc:     "David MacDonald" <david100@sympatico.ca>, "Steve Faulkner" 
<faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, "w3c-wai-gl@w3.org" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Date:   04/28/2015 05:52 AM
Subject:        Re: H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art, 
emoticons, and   leetspeak



On 28 Apr 2015, at 14:22, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:

> My question to Steve that he may have missed was ”what’s wrong 
> with the abbr example?” but David you seem to be raising an argument 
> for not using abbr, which would suggest also removing H28 
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20150226/H28).

Just a quick thought mainly for the H28 discussion (I am not an ASCII 
art connoisseur and don’t know exactly about leetspeak):

I think this is more a screen reader bug and I would consider adding the 
information there is better practice than leaving it out completely, 
even if the user needs to activate the feature in assistive 
technologies.

Also this has implication for people with cognitive disabilities, for 
example, that can’t get to descriptions. While there may be a user 
group that isn’t helped using a technique, we shouldn’t rule it out 
for other user groups. It might also be provided to screen reader users 
by default in the future.

Cheers,
Eric

>
> Any additional information is appreciated!
> Thanks,
> AWK
>
> From: David MacDonald [mailto:david100@sympatico.ca]
> Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 6:29 PM
> To: Steve Faulkner
> Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
> Subject: Re: H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art, 
> emoticons, and leetspeak
>
> Agree that we could drop the abbr. It's kind of a hack, and JAWS has 
> abbr support turned off by default, so the abbr may not even speak.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> David MacDonald
>
>
>
> CanAdapt Solutions Inc.
>
> Tel:  613.235.4902
>
> LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacdonald100>
>
> www.Can-Adapt.com<http://www.Can-Adapt.com>
>
>
>
> Adapting the web to all users
>          Including those with disabilities
>
> If you are not the intended recipient, please review our privacy 
> policy<http://www.davidmacd.com/disclaimer.html>
>
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 9:50 AM, Steve Faulkner 
> <faulkner.steve@gmail.com<mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com>> wrote:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H86.html

>
> suggest adding ARIA-fied example (from html5 spec)
>
> <figure role="img" aria-labelledby="fish-caption"
> <pre>
> o           .'`/
>   '      /  (
> O    .-'` ` `'-._      .')
>    _/ (o)        '.  .' /
>    )       )))     ><  <
>    `\  |_\      _.'  '. \
>      '-._  _ .-'       '.)
>  jgs     `\__\
> </pre>
> <figcaption id="fish-caption">
>  <cite>Joan G. Stark, "fish"</cite>.
>  October 1997. ASCII on electrons. 28×8.
> </figcaption>
> </figure>
>
> Also question the use of <abbr> in this technique:
> <abbr title="Austin Rocks">Au5t1N r0xx0rz</abbr>
> --
>
> Regards
>
> SteveF
> HTML 5.1<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>




--

Eric Eggert
Web Accessibility Specialist
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at Wold Wide Web Consortium (W3C)