- From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:56:41 +1000
- To: "E.J. Zufelt" <everett@zufelt.ca>
- Cc: Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>, public-html-a11y@w3.org
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 8:49 AM, E.J. Zufelt <everett@zufelt.ca> wrote: > On 2011-08-23, at 6:31 PM, Janina Sajka wrote: > >> Silvia Pfeiffer writes: >>> The problem of aria-describedby automatically starting to read out the >>> description is not as a big a problem as you make it out to be. Every >>> screen reader has a key that stops the screen reader from continuing >>> to read what it is currently reading ... >> >> >> And then what? Are we to abandon reading anything else on the page? If >> we resume, where do we resume? Right in the middle of that >> long-description that wasn't so interesting and caused us to stop speech >> in the first instance? >> >> No, Silvia, it won't work that way. > > As a screen-reader user my first response was to agree with Silvia. I * never * use continuous reading on a web page, I rarely use continuous reading in any document. However, I do recognize that continuous reading is used by some screen-reader users. > > If I were to run into a long description that bored me I would likely (JAWS): > > 1. press the down arrow key a couple of times until I was past the description and then resume continuous reading, or > > 2. Press the read next paragraph key combination and then, presuming I was past the description, resume continuous reading. > > However, I would never be quite sure that I had actually finished w/ the long description, and that I wasn't skipping to far and missing important or potentially interesting information. That is indeed the interaction that I meant and IIUC what Janina termed "Escapable Structure". Janina: I don't quite follow why what I suggested is a problem. Are you taking the view of a person that is not interacting with the page and therefore cannot press a button to go to the next element to be read out? The way I see it is: with @aria-describedby the screenreader will start reading out the long description to you and you have to actively interrupt it and move on if you don't want it. in contrast, with @longdesc the screenreader mentions that a long description is available and you have to actively press a button to get it read out if you want it, then press another button to move on. >From where I stand, they are two different means of interacting and some people may prefer one over the other. I cannot in general say though that one is better than the other. They both have their merits. Where am I wrong? Thanks for helping me understand. Cheers, Silvia.
Received on Wednesday, 24 August 2011 00:57:28 UTC