RE: HTML5 implementor feedback requested - title attribute recommendations and requirements

Resending so this makes it to the archive.

Paul Cotton, Microsoft Canada
17 Eleanor Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K2E 6A3
Tel: (425) 705-9596 Fax: (425) 936-7329

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharon Newman (COHEN) 
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 6:44 PM
To: Steve Faulkner; Adrian Bateman; Maciej Stachowiak; Anne van Kesteren; L. David Baron
Cc: HTMLWG WG; Sam Ruby; Paul Cotton; Ian Hickson; HTML Accessibility Task Force
Subject: RE: HTML5 implementor feedback requested - title attribute recommendations and requirements

Steve - Adrian asked me to respond to this mail. For IE we have no plans to change our tooltip support right now. 

If we were to add keyboard support for tooltips, I'm not sure that we would add all items with title attributes to the tab order. It seems like doing that would have the potential to significantly increase the number of tab stops on the page which might make navigating the page tedious. Having tooltips display when navigating webpages with caret browsing is another possible solution which would keep the number of tabstops on the page the same while still allowing tooltips to be explored via keyboard. 

-sharon 


-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Faulkner [mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 2:58 AM
To: Adrian Bateman; Maciej Stachowiak; Anne van Kesteren; L. David Baron
Cc: HTMLWG WG; Sam Ruby; Paul Cotton; Ian Hickson; HTML Accessibility Task Force
Subject: HTML5 implementor feedback requested - title attribute recommendations and requirements

Hi Adrian, Maciej, Anne and David
(note: if there is a more approriate implementor representative this email should go to please advise)

The HTML5 specification specifies and recommends the use of the title attribute to mark up a variety of text content including captions for images and short footnotes.

I am seeking your feedback as I consider that HTML5 specification currently includes informative and normative authoring and conformance text that relies upon non existent browsers implementations.
I filed an number of related bugs which have been closed wontfix and consequently escalated them to issues, I have also prepared a request to reopen on a related issue:

ISSUE-182: Advice in spec about annotations promotes inaccessible content
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/182

ISSUE-190: Replace poor coding example for figure with multiple images
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/190

re-open issue 80 (title attribute used as caption)
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/notitlev2


For the text cited in these issues to be requiring and/or recommending use of the title attribute, it should expected that resulting content will be available to any user via the inbuilt browser mechanisms  for content display.

If this is not a reasonable expectation can you provide details as to why it is not?

As implemented in browsers (including the contexts noted above), the content contained in the title attribute is available to users of pointing devices. It is not available to keyboard users or alternative input devices such as single switches. It is also not available to users of touch screen devices such as tablets and smart phones.

Given that advice in the HTML5 specification should either match current implementations or what is expected to be implemented, can you please provide information about when it is expected that the display of title attribute content will be available to non pointing device users and users of touch screen devices?

There is a non-normative implementation suggestion to provide device independent access:

"For example, a visual user agent could make elements with a title attribute focusable, and could make any focused element with a title attribute show its tooltip under the element while the element has focus. This would allow a user to tab around the document to find all the advisory text." [1]

Do any implementors have concrete plans to implement device independent display of title attribute content? (I asked this question approx 9 months ago, at that time there was no commitment forthcoming
[2])

If there ARE concrete plans, do any implementors plan to employ the implementation method suggested in HTML5? i.e. make any element with a title attribute focusable and presumably included in the default tab order?


[1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-title-attribute-0
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Apr/0468.html
--
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG

www.paciellogroup.com | www.HTML5accessibility.com | www.twitter.com/stevefaulkner
HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives - dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/ Web Accessibility Toolbar - www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html

Received on Saturday, 17 December 2011 05:10:26 UTC