Re: Proof of growth of acceptance/implementation - longdesc

Laura Carlson, Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:57:35 -0500:

> [1] http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld.html#tools
> [2] http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld.html
> [3] http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld.html#wild

Laura, here are some info which I believe you haven't listed in your 
research page:

1) AD Gallery [*] - a JQuery based image gallery with longdesc support 
   (*] http://coffeescripter.com/code/ad-gallery/

2) Weblight [*] - a link checker, which also checks @longdesc URIs
   [*] http://www.illumit.com/weblight/

3) Jaws+Firefox is listed, but doesn't its @longdesc support rely on 
Firefox's longdesc DOM support? If so, then it can't be argued that a 
removal of @longdesc will not impact AT.

4) Numerous tools support @longdesc via syntax based auto-completion 
and similar ways (from WYSIWG Amaya to text editors with HTML support - 
like the popular mac editor TextMate.app).

5) Thierry Koblentz's easyAlbum [*].
   [*] http://tjkdesign.com/articles/gallery/photo_gallery.asp
   Quote: 'What appears in the "slideshow" is nothing other than the 
value of these 3 attributes: alt; title; longdesc"
   Check the second and tenth image in the demo on that page - the 
longdesc is made available to to any UA which support javascript, and 
is otherwise available to any UA with longdesc support. (The site says 
that a plug-in for Dreamweaver were in development.)

6) Gallery [*], is a popular open source online image gallery solution, 
did support @longdesec
   [*] http://www.gallery2.org/  [*] http://gallery.menalto.com
   Its web site has 622 hits for 'longdesc'. [0]
   However the implementation were very incorrect: it simply duplicated 
the @alt text into the @longdesc attribute. [1] This bug was "fixed" in 
august 2007, when the feature simply was removed - see bug report. [2] 
Given its popularity, it seems relevant to consider if not Gallery is 
an important for the link rot and misue which the @longdesc 
contestesrs, including Mark Pilgrim's Longdesc Lottery article, so 
often has cited as reason to park @longdesc as absolete. [3]. 

PS: It seems like gallery software should be investigated a little more 
- both to detect other possible buggy implementations that could have 
lead to longdesc lottery style rotten links, as well as good examples. 
For example, most of the 44 results with 'longdesc' on 
coppermine-gallery.net seems to contain links to images rather than 
being links to long description. [4]

[0] http://www.google.no/search?q=site%3Amenalto.com+longdesc
[1] http://gallery.menalto.com/node/49284
[2] 
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1699582&group_id=7130&atid=107130
[3] http://blog.whatwg.org/the-longdesc-lottery
[4] http://www.google.no/search?q=longdesc+site:coppermine-gallery.net
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Tuesday, 21 September 2010 23:45:57 UTC