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

Matthew Turvey, Thu, 5 Apr 2012 09:48:12 +0100:
> On 5 April 2012 01:27, Leif Halvard Silli:

>> The quote begins: "_the CP_ we have endorsed DOES provide".
> 
> Clearly the CP itself is not used by users to access long descriptions :)

Clearly they don't. Fortunately, that's another thing Janina didn't 
suggest.

>> 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'. [...]

> 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.

If you see rel=longdesc as irrelevant, why list it in your CCP? 
Especially since it is a _Zero Edit_ proposal: It seems against the 
spirit of a zero edit proposal to present a *new* method, and that you 
don't even believe in it, doesn't make it any more sensible mention it.

> 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. [...]

Indeed: Users don't need to know whether it is an anchor link or an 
onClick event either. But that doesn't mean that they don't need the 
effect that I would have thought rel=longdesc was supposed to have.

For example: If the AT supports @longdesc, then users do perceive a 
difference between - on one side - an <img> with a @longdesc URL and - 
on the other side - an <a> with an image inside. E.g. in the latter 
case, imagine that the @alt text says "Click here" or "Link": It would 
then be near impossible for the user to guess that the link link lead 
to a pagee with description of the image itself - it would be more 
natural to guess that it lead to a page with another topic.

So I would have thought that rel=longdesc would involve features that 
helped the user separate regular links from longdesc links. Personally, 
I consider the @longdesc link as a 'demoted' link: The 'link-i-ness' is 
kept in the background so that the image itself can stand in the 
foreground. 

But since you don't propose anything like that, then I understand where 
the point with mentioning it is.
-- 
Leif H Silli

Received on Friday, 6 April 2012 00:43:26 UTC