Re: Media Queries & Details/Summary for extended descriptions

And here the response from Florian ...

Florian Rivoal writes:

> On Feb 5, 2016, at 18:43, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Feb 4, 2016, at 5:52 AM, Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi, James:
>> 
>> Writing off list for now, but with a CC to Florian as this is a question
>> about creating a binary MQ for show/hide presence of extended
>> descriptions in HTML Details/Summary ...
>> 
>> One piece of the puzzle that Dpub (and ARIA) need in order to move away
>> from longdesc/Describedat and into using Details/Summary for extended
>> descriptions is a way for the user to configure their browser to alert
>> them when a particular image has a Details/Summary which is further
>> identified via ARIA as an extended description.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand. Why do you need a new MQ for this? Couldn't that just be an AT behavior?

Hi,

Switching between different styles based on a media query, including hiding or showing (in different ways) a summary element sounds possible, but I have a harder time picturing out exactly what the query itself would be responding to.

Even if we tie MQs to user preferences, which isn't out of question, "For accessibility reasons I want the summary element to be shown rather than hidden" is unlikely to be adopted as an MQ:

1) It is way too specific, we cannot have MQs for every design preference in the world. User Style sheets are probably more appropriate for tweaking individual design decisions, possibly per site.
  summary { display: block !important; }
vs
  summary { display:none; }

2) Features designed exclusively for accessibility use cases, as opposed to features to be used by everyone and with strong accessibility benefits, tend to be neglected by authors and to have limited benefits.

3) There's a privacy aspect to exposing disability related preferences to sites, be it via MQs or other mechanisms, that needs to be taken into account.

 - Florian

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures	http://www.w3.org/wai/apa

Received on Tuesday, 9 February 2016 10:13:03 UTC