- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:58:59 +0100
- To: David Singer <singer@apple.com>
- Cc: David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>, HTML Accessibility Task Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>, W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>
David Singer, Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:18:29 -0700:
> OK, so maybe I should be corrected, and I apologize if I misunderstood.
>
> But 'normal content' is often not 'visible' today anyway - common web
> design hides stuff and does appealing appearance (slide-in, and so
> on) when wanted.
If there was a need to, more directly, glue the link directly to the
image, and if the author wanted - for that - to use an aria-describedBY
which he/she pointed to the visual link, then there would be the same
issue: Link duplication. One could, of course, wrap the image in a
link, but that impacts on the perceived role: In VoiceOver, the alt
text is treated as link text and the presence of an image, is not
presented.
To be able to, effectively, reuse visual links - which I agree is a
noble goal, we would need not @longdesc and not @aria-describedAT [if
it would become just like @longdesc] but a new attribute - let's call
it @linked-anchor:
<img src=s alt=a linked-anchor=linked >
<a id=linked href='long-description'>Image description.</a>
The effect of @linked-anchor should be to reuse the URL of the anchor
as longdesc link. Unless we add more rules for how it works - such as a
rule to ignore the longdesc effect if the next element is the linked
anchor, then the above link would be presented twice to AT users: Once
as longdesc link, and once in the normal flow. But if the above link
got an @aria-hidden='true' or @hidden or style='display:none', then it
would only be presented once.
Such a @linked-anchor could be presented to users - AT user as well as
other users - exactly the same way that @longdesc is presented.
> I am not sure I agree with either of (a) if the
> description is part of the 'normal content' it'll annoy 'normal
> users' or (b) the affordance, if needed, that shows the description,
> should be specific to accessibility users. Both the content and the
> affordance may need *identifying* ('this links to the long
> description of that'), and again, not really specifically for
> accessibility users, though their software needs this discoverable
> link.
So what do you think about @linked-anchor, in that regard?
--
leif h silli
Received on Friday, 16 March 2012 10:59:42 UTC