- From: Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>
- Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 20:57:05 -0400
- To: John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>
- CC: public-html-a11y@w3.org
On 09/17/2012 08:07 PM, John Foliot wrote: > Sam Ruby wrote: >> >>> To end a stare-down, somebody has to blink, it's that simple. If the >>> engineers truly want to work on a "better" solution, leave the "less >> better" >>> one in place until you have the better one solved. >> >> I will suggest that the word "you" in this sentence is a bit >> unfortunate. > > For clarification, that was a collective "you", as I was referencing those > engineers that want to work on a better solution, as well as those engineers > (who may or may not be the same engineers) that insist that the only way to > work on a better solution is to first obsolete the existing solution. It is a pity that this call for consensus is going on while Richard Schwerdtfeger is on vacation. At one time Richard participated in a discussion concerning deprecating longdesc when aria-describedby was introduced.[1] I'll note that that was over 4 years ago. Later Richard and Steve worked on an unofficial aria-describedat document.[2] That was earlier this year. Sadly, neither have gotten much traction to date. Perhaps neither are appropriate, but that's not the point. I can't help but wonder if we would have been done by now if but a small fraction of the effort that was put into "instating longdesc" focused instead on developing a solution to the "long description" need that browser vendors are willing to implement. I'll go further, and say that the most optimistic estimates have HTML5 going to REC in 2014, and if we could find a way to produce a collective "we" instead of continuing to refer to a collective "you" that a comprehensive solution could be designed by the early next year and deployed and tested for interoperability by year end and make it in time for HTML5. Taking my co-chair hat off, I can confidently state that that's a solution that IBM would endorse. > JF - Sam Ruby [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Feb/0273.html [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2012Mar/0268.html [3] http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter
Received on Tuesday, 18 September 2012 00:57:33 UTC