Re: longdesc verbiage

Hi Chaals,

Thank you!

I swapped your text in and added a couple of links.
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/InstateLongdesc/HiddenMetadataFallacy

Best Regards,
Laura

On 5/9/11, Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 09 May 2011 11:25:26 +0200, Laura Carlson
> <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ...
>> Chaals,
>> Do you have your proposed text ready for the metadata section [4] of
>> the change proposal?
>
> An objection has been raised against longdesc (and the use cases which
> rely on information not presented in the same page as an image) that it is
> "hidden metadata" and its quality and relevance are likely to deteriorate
> over time. While it is apparent that content which is immediately visible
> can be more readily maintained in a simplistic content management
> workflow, this argument falsely assumes that is always the case, and
> further falsely assumes that the presence of some level of degradation is
> a fatal problem for the use of longdesc to improve accessibility.
>
> In fact substantial amounts of Web content are maintained in prcesses
> which assume the presence of "hidden" metadata (which is actually readily
> discoverable) and require maintenance of that data as well as of the
> "primary" content (that is immediately visible by default). In addition,
> where an image is not changed, it is unlikely that a well crafted
> description needs to be changed, so there is no inherent degradation.
>
> While longdesc does not require "hidden" metadata (it can be used simply
> to unambiguously identify inline content of the page as a description for
> an image), there are use cases which benefit from the ability to support
> it. Images maintained as resources in a content management system, or even
> just by copying and pasting the img tag with a link inside it such as
> longdesc provides, can easily re-use the description rather than requiring
> that it too be replicated. This matches common workflows for managed
> content, and there is no reason to make it difficult. It is normal in
> authoring tools that copying objects between pages may require rewriting
> links appropriately (their destinations are, after all "hidden"), and this
> does not seem to break the web.
>
>
>
> --
> Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
>      je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
> http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
>
>


-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Monday, 9 May 2011 13:24:47 UTC