- From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:01:14 +1000
- To: John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>
- Cc: public-html-a11y@w3.org
On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 1:20 AM, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote: > Silvia Pfeiffer wrote >> It would almost be better if we just had >> one mechanism to provide long descriptions (whichever of the two) >> and >> then a browser preference to set whether you want the browser to push >> the information at you (in the case of @longdesc that would mean: >> downloading the URL and starting to read it out) or pulling the >> information (in the case of @aria-describedby that would mean: waiting >> for a user interaction to read the referenced section(s)). > > I think you mean the inverse: @longdesc is the pull (on demand) whilst > aria-describedby is the push (download and start reading). I actually meant what I wrote: I was blue-sky thinking about how easy it would be to introduce the push-model of @aria-describedby to be applied to @longdesc and equally how easy it would be to introduce the pull-model of @longdesc to @aria-describedby. > Aria-describedby is a more general purpose means of providing an > accessible description to the Accessibility APIs, and ideally that happens > "automatically" - the push model you have described. For example, that > functionality is critical if aria-describedby were to be used like this: > > <fieldset> > <legend>Search this site</legend> > <p id="instructions">Searching for Rainbows or Unicorns will cause > this website to explode!</p> > > <label for="search">Search</label> > <input type="text" id="Search" autofocus > aria-describedby="instructions"/> > <input type="submit" name="search" value="Go"> > </fieldset> In the WAI CG Consensus Recommendations on Text alternatives in HTML 5 http://www.w3.org/2009/06/Text-Alternatives-in-HTML5.html aria-describedby is listed as an attribute for providing long descriptions. Is the example that you are providing here really one of providing a long description? Wouldn't this be better solved with using @aria-labelledby? Cheers, Silvia.
Received on Thursday, 25 August 2011 02:02:01 UTC