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

On 5 April 2012 01:27, Leif Halvard Silli
<xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> wrote:
> Matthew Turvey, Wed, 4 Apr 2012 20:10:24 +0100:
>> The HTML-A11Y-TF appears to have suggested to the HTMLWG that longdesc
>> "DOES provide effective and consistent support for users regardless of
>> browser and AT":
>>
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Jun/0204.html
>
> The quote begins: "_the CP_ we have endorsed DOES provide".

Clearly the CP itself is not used by users to access long descriptions :)

>> A normal link on the image, optionally enhanced with
>> rel=longdesc where required, is a far better solution to AAP's
>> requirements at the current time and for the foreseeable future.
>
> With regard to the 'a link on the image' solution, then your CP does
> not solve the problem that users need to separate 'normal image links'
> from 'image with a link to a longer description'. While rel=longdesc
> *could* have solved that problem, status is that it has no effect on
> anything.

rel=longdesc can provide a programmatic association where required,
but none of the purported use cases require UA/AT to do anything
special with a longdesc link other than expose it as a link.  So this
is irrelevant.

As the Zero edit CP points out, there's no evidence that users are
aware of this theoretical distinction or would benefit in any way from
being made aware of it. The alt text on the image can be used to
describe the purpose of the link, just like every other linked image.
So there's no "problem" here.

The main thing that unites most of the longdesc examples in the wild
is that they are not what most people would normally call "long
descriptions".

-Matt

Received on Thursday, 5 April 2012 08:48:45 UTC