Action 712

The short answer is:

1.2.1 In situations where missing or empty alternative content or 
associations can be identified, and when those elements achieve focus, 
the user agent will notify the user, and provide a mechanism to relate 
all available metadata to the user, upon their request. Thereby, 
enabling the user to take appropriate alternative action.

But please read on for the rationale.

I was again looking at 1.2.1 & 1.2.2. Let me refer to the previous email:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2012JanMar/0039.html

which says:

"Now we could do the easy thing and combine 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 mark it as
AAA and expect no one to implement it. Or we could reduce our
requirements and make it an A (which I think would help more disabled
users). I'd forget the repair aspects and go for user inclusion instead
- and I'd combine *all* 1.2.n into 1 A level guideline thus:

1.2.1 In situations where missing or empty alternative content or
associations can be identified, the user agent will provide notify when
the element achieves focus, and upon their request, will relate all
available metadata to the user, enabling the user to take appropriate
alternative action.

I may also add aspects to a second AA/AAA SC saying that notifications
could be ignored for selected components - or that a UA would facilitate
a web search (based on resource filename - say) to assist the user in
finding open access resources with alternative content already present.

I think the first suggestion should happen - I could understand why we
may not wish to implement my second 2 suggestions (ignore and web-search)."



*Now for my update*

I've searched in the document for 'missing' and 'alternative' apart from 
1.2.n the only relevant section I can find is 4.1.2. I think these are 
similar but different as 1.2.n is about provision to the user while 
4.1.2 is about provision to AT.

Now as per my previous email - I think we need to do something drastic 
and so I think 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 should be changed to be about 'enabling 
the user to take appropriate alternative action' not about AAA repairs 
that a browser will never implement. Further I think that this means it 
looks a lot like '1.2.4 Broken Alternative Content: The user can be 
notified when the user agent cannot render alternative content (e.g. 
when captions are broken).'

I think these three can be combined into:

1.2.1 In situations where missing or empty alternative content or 
associations can be identified, and when those elements achieve focus, 
the user agent will notify the user, and provide a mechanism to relate 
all available metadata to the user, upon their request. Thereby, 
enabling the user to take appropriate alternative action.

I'm not even sure at this point I'd bother with current 1.2.3. After all 
as we provide for programmatic access then it is more likely an add on 
(or AT) will take care of this.

Cheers

Received on Tuesday, 10 April 2012 16:05:11 UTC