Re: Please vote on the canvas accessibility proposal

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 10:09 PM, Steven Faulkner
<faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi Ian,
>
>>All the other cases I can think of -- braille users with no vision at all,
>>speech synth users with no vision at all, text-mode users, etc -- the
>>statement that there is no canvas support is actually pretty accurate,
>>though not especially kind. It'd probably be better in these cases to
>>actually let the user know that they are missing critical functionality
>>than to silently say nothing.
>
> 1. how do they know that it is critical content?
> 2. how do they know what canvas support means? how many people who use a
> browser (many peopel don't even know what a browser it) now or will in the
> future know what it means?
> 3. If they are using firefox for example, they ARE using a browser that
> supports canvas.
> 4. there is no indication that the element is missing apart from the text
> that will be encountered inline along with any other text on the page, it
> will make no sense.

That's the same experience that people using a legacy browser get
though. So, there will be a substantial number of users that cannot
make use of that particular page anyway and if the web developer
decided to cut out those people from using their site, then it is a
larger problem. I cannot honestly see what an attribute on the
<canvas> element will change about this situation.

I actually am starting to regard this as an educational problem. We
need to create a truckload of examples of different types of <canvas>
use where the canvas has been made accessible. Web developers use such
examples as templates for their own code. Honestly, that will do more
to make more <canvas> elements accessible than the introduction of an
element that lets them get away with a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Cheers,
Silvia.

Received on Thursday, 25 February 2010 12:39:10 UTC