- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:13:39 +0200
- To: "Joshue O Connor" <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>, "Matthew Turvey" <mcturvey@gmail.com>
- Cc: "Geoff Freed" <geoff_freed@wgbh.org>, "HTML Accessibility Task Force" <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
On Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:21:17 +0200, Matthew Turvey <mcturvey@gmail.com> wrote: > On 2 April 2012 08:45, Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie> wrote: > >> 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. > > My point was in response to Geoff's "It works, and it works every > time" comment. In my opinion this whole idea is fundamentally flawed > because it requires a different activation method to a normal link, > which will inevitably be less easy and intuitive to use. > >> 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). > > No one has suggested drastically reducing anything, so let's try to > keep the silly hyperbole out of this discussion. What has been > suggested is making long descriptions accessible to everyone who needs > them, right now, including SR users who cannot currently access > longdesc. > > Since aria-describedby allows pointing to a link on the page, do we > even need aria-describedat? Yes. Because 1. aria-describedby *doesn't* provide a particularly usable way of getting to a description off the page, and more importantly 2. aria-describedby flattens everything to plain text, which is only suitable for some of the use cases. cheers > --- Begin quote --- > Because we are confident that aria-describedby will be supported by > assistive technologies at least as well as longdesc when HTML5 becomes > a W3C Recommendation: > > IF aria-describedby is incorporated in HTML5 and aria-describedby > allows pointing to long text alternatives that are off of the page (by > pointing to a link on the page) > > THEN we believe it is acceptable to obsolete longdesc in HTML5. > > RATIONALE: It is important that a long text mechanism exist which is > capable of pointing off page. Long descriptions are often too lengthy > and detailed to be included on the main page. If aria-describedby can > point off page (by pointing to a link on the page) then it would > remove any need for continued support of LONGDESC which is not widely > used by authors at this time. (NOTE: it is understood that > aria-describedby cannot point off page directly.) > --- End quote --- > > http://www.w3.org/2009/06/Text-Alternatives-in-HTML5 > > -Matt -- Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan noen norsk http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
Received on Monday, 2 April 2012 16:14:16 UTC