Re: Call for consensus on longdesc change proposal

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:17 PM, Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> A couple of quick things.
>
> Sylvia said:
>
>> However, I'm reacting to this statement being used as an argument for
>> the re-introduction to @longdesc:
>>
>> "It is unlikely that many content creators or developers will learn
>> ARIA (something not native HTML). They already feel like they've
>> learned far more than they should have to know under their job
>> description. And in many cases, their supervisors agree. (reference
>> Cliff Tyllick)"
>>
>> I think this statement does nothing to help the cause and quoting it
>> as an argument to introduce @longdesc is harmful. That's all.
>
> While harmful may be a little strong, I would be inclined to agree.
> While I agree with Laura that the comment is indicative of the reality
> of web dev for many, it could be counterprductive. I guess it's
> relatively trivial to remove or put somewhere else? We also don't want
> ARIA to be percieved as the 'poor second cousin' to HTML 5, and a
> comment like that kinda implies it.
>
> Regarding ariadescribedat, while this is a good idea - it is down the
> road in terms of implementation etc. @longdesc can ref a semantically
> rich URI, is good for backwards compat, is a bumpy cowpath but not a
> precedent and so on so while I also very much support ARIA - there is
> currently no functional equivalent within HTML 5, hence my support for
> Lauras CP and @longdesc in general.
>
> So right now, to my mind its not enough to say - lets do it with ARIA.

Note that that's not what I am saying. I very much believe that the
aria attributes serve their own purpose.

However, what I am saying is that in order to argue for @longdesc we
do not need to slash the aria attributes (at least not the existing
ones - aria-describedat us a different beast).

Regards,
Silvia.

Received on Wednesday, 18 May 2011 09:40:20 UTC