Re: My case for the obsoletion of longdesc (Was: 48-Hour Consensus Call: InstateLongdesc CP Update)

Maciej Stachowiak, Sun, 16 Sep 2012 08:57:54 -0700:
> On Sep 16, 2012, at 3:39 AM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>> Maciej Stachowiak, Sat, 15 Sep 2012 21:46:47 -0700:
>>> On Sep 15, 2012, at 7:55 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>>> 
>>>> However, due to bug 22261 - "Clicking on a non-text 
>>>> input element does not give it focus",[1] Webkit and Chromium suffers 
>>>> from the following: if one opens a longdesc link (e.g. with Webkit 
>>>> based iCab) VoiceOver will start to read from the top of the page 
>>>> instead of from the section where the particular longdesc was situated. 
>>>> Something which takes away lots of flexibility with regard to longdesc. 
>>>> And, in fact, it also impacts regular links as well - it is is real 
>>>> hole in VoiceOver and Webkit's elegance.
>>> 
>>> I would say this is the responsibility of the implementors of iCab, 
>>> not WebKit or VoiceOver. There is no native support of any kind for 
>>> longdesc in WebKit or in VoiceOver. iCab authors have not reported 
>>> any bugs indicating that they are blocked. And it is my belief that 
>>> iCab can handle this detail by itself.
>> 
>> I have forwarded your view to iCab. It is true that iCab works around a 
>> few bugs as well as issues that the developer disagrees with. So may be 
>> this would be one such issue.
>> 
>> However - and may be this was not sufficient clear in what I said 
>> above: I would say that that bug also affect skip-to links - and all 
>> links where it is important that focus is moved to the target. This 
>> bug, therefore, is a mayor drawback for Webkit keyboard users.
> 
> I did comment in the bug - I tentatively think links should get focus 
> on click if the user has enabled tabbing to links (or is on a 
> platform where you always tab to links). 

This bug? https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17450


(I mentioned the wrong bug above.)

> But I think that issue is 
> off-topic-for longdesc. Happy to discuss elsewhere if you wish.

I hope you see that there is a number of longdesc techniques that do 
not work very well (for unsighted users and for keyboard users) because 
of that bug. It doesn't even work well to e.g. replace James’s <iframe> 
with a <a> element. The only thing that works (unless you add extra 
JavaScript and/or CSS) is to make sure the longdesc resource is a dull, 
naked page that contains nothing but the longdesc resource.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Sunday, 16 September 2012 16:41:10 UTC