Re: 48-Hour Consensus Call: ARIA-DescribedAT & Longdesc

I agree.  

One clarification:  my statement below singling out JAWS' implementation
of longdesc is not meant to imply that it is the ideal implementation, nor
should it be taken as *the* reason for keeping longdesc in the spec.  It's
just one example of implementation.  The fact that other screen-reader
vendors have chosen not to support longdesc, or any other element or
attribute of the spec, is not the responsibility of the working group.

Geoff/NCAM


On 4/2/12 3:45 AM, "Joshue O Connor" <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie> wrote:

>Matthew Turvey wrote:
>> On 1 April 2012 14:53, Geoff Freed<geoff_freed@wgbh.org>  wrote:
>>>> - Support for longdesc in browsers and AT is poor and has been so for
>>>> many years.
>>> GF:
>>> True, but there *is* support, and it isn't new-- it has been available
>>>for
>>> years.  Ask anyone who uses JAWS (anecdotally speaking, the most
>>>popular
>>> screen reader in use today) in combination with IE or Firefox
>>>(anecdotally
>>> speaking, the two most popular browsers in use today).  Better yet,
>>>try it
>>> yourself.  It works, and it works every time.
>>
>> I don't think that's entirely accurate. There's at least some evidence
>> that even JAWS users sometimes have difficulty accessing longdesc
>> links. See:
>> 
>>http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/LongdescZeroEdit#Problems_
>>with_Longdesc
>
>You should not infer a correlation between difficulty accessing content
>with a lack of usefulness. This is a dangerous path. Any difficulty is
>more to do with implementation of the idea rather than its inception. It
>makes sense to me to retain @longdesc and improve it. I don't agree with
>the year zero approach. I don't agree with making an element 'sort of'
>accessible to everyone while drastically reducing its usefulness for the
>original target audience (blind of vision impaired users in this case).
>
>My 2 cents.
>
>Josh

Received on Monday, 2 April 2012 11:16:03 UTC