- From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 10:41:56 +1000
- To: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Cc: Geoff Freed <geoff_freed@wgbh.org>, HTML Accessibility Task Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Geoff, > > I will be leaving the HTMLWG and accessibility task force shortly as > Judy sent me the link to the form. But before I go I wanted to add to > you're statement: > >> Publishers in America have used it extensively in the past and are continuing to use it today as it's the best *available* method to deliver long descriptions to students that need them. > > longdesc improves accessibility in practice: > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2012Sep/att-0025/comments-mt.html#practice > > Notably the two sister sites Statistics Canada and Statistique Canada > began consistently using longdesc in "The Daily" publication. "The > Daily" produces statistics on a business-day basis that help Canadians > better understand their country, its population, resources, economy, > society and culture. Please refer to Statistics Canada and Statistique > Canada for detailed evidence. > http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld.html#statcan > http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld.html#statcanf > > longdesc is experiencing increased usage in the wild > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2012Sep/att-0025/comments-mt.html#increasedusage This is very good data and a great list of sites that support longdesc for their accessibility needs. I have always admired your excellently prepared data and the excellent work you've done for the TF, so I am really sad to see you go. Interestingly, you data actually confirms the message that I just sent on another thread [1] about moving to @aria-describedat. I would think that all of these institutions that are supportive of accessibility and are using @longdesc in the correct way for this purpose would accept moving to use @aria-describedat if we encouraged them to do so. In this way, the vast pollution of @longdesc values that we see in the wild would be replaced by only clean and accurate use of @aria-describedat . It would make it easier for tools to identify sites that have appropriate and usable long text alternatives, since you can just search for @aria-describedat and know you will get good results, rather than searching for @longdesc and having to wade through vast numbers of misuses. Thanks again. Regards, Silvia. [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2012Sep/0447.html
Received on Sunday, 23 September 2012 00:42:44 UTC