Re: 48-Hour Consensus Call: InstateLongdesc CP Update

>From the attachment:

> "Concrete, ample, and compelling evidence of over two thousand examples in the wild verifies beyond a reasonable doubt that authors do in fact implement longdesc in ways that improve accessibility in practice."

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2012Sep/att-0025/comments-mt.html

Here's a cherry-picked sample of some of the "longdesc examples in the
wild", quoted in their entirety:

* A color photo of man sitting at a panel discussion.

* This image is a pricture of the Journal on Religion and American Culture

* Waterstone's logo which simply reads: waterstone's.

* A diagnostic box which shows all of the links on the page, along
with the link text

* This image is the search submit button for the search engine on the
RAAC template. It has the text "Search" in green text on a blue
background.

* The resources.gif image is the page title and has the text
"Resources" in white on a blue background.

* The Blue Highlight Spacer is a background image used to give color
to specific sections of a page. It is a deep navy blue in color.

* This is a rollover image that switches between the image
resourcessoff.gif, when the cursor is not over the image, and
resourceson.gif. The "off" image has the text "Resources" in white
lettering on a blue (#000099) background. The "on" image has the same
text, but is highlighted in white. Image links to the "Resources"
page.

* A dark blue square surrounded by a gold border with centered, white,
bold letters S, E, O above the word Design. This symbol was chosen to
represent both who we are and what we do.

* A horizontal rectangle containing the words fosi.org and associate member.

* A horizontal rectangle similar to all W3C labels. This label
contains all the letters in the title, W3C AND W, C, A, G.

* This page is written in XHTML 1.0, the extensible hypertext markup
language. It has been validated using the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) validator.

* This page is written using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS 2). It has
been validated using the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) validator.

* Icon indicating that this page is in Level Triple-A conformance with
the World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines, version 1.0.  (On the icon itself, this is
all abbreviated as "W3C WAI-AAA WCAG 1.0".)  The icon is an active
hyperlink which will take you to a page on the W3C website explaining
what Level Triple-A conformance means.

Note the last 3 examples above are counted as 66 "examples in the
wild" because they're each used on 22 pages. Another example is
counted 30 times because it's used on 30 pages. Another example is
counted 98 times because it's used on 98 pages.

This pattern is also worth noting (I've edited the markup for clarity):

* <a href="galeria/index.php"><img longdesc="galeria/index.php" ...></a>

* <a href="../longdesc/12oldpie.html"><img
longdesc="../longdesc/12oldpie.html" ...></a>

* <a href="/about/images/DFG-History-Timeline-LongDesc.html"><img
longdesc="/about/images/DFG-History-Timeline-LongDesc.html" ...></a>

* <a href="06appendix_a_asthmaflowchartlongdesc.htm"><img
longdesc="06appendix_a_seizureflowchartlongdesc.htm" ...></a>

* <a href="longdesc.html"><IMG longdesc="longdesc.html" ...></a>

* <a href="moc-pie.htm"><img longdesc="moc-pie.htm" ...></a>

* <a href="long-desc/chart-eng.htm"><img
longdesc="long-desc/chart-eng.htm" ...></a>

* <a href="longdesc/structuresesame.html"><img
longdesc="longdesc/structuresesame.html" ...></a>

* <a href="longdesc/chart1_run172_ld.html"><img
longdesc="longdesc/chart1_run172_ld.html" ...></a>

* <a href="plan0104-09longdesc.htm"><img
longdesc="plan0104-09longdesc.htm" ...><span class="hide">Long
description available</span></a>

People can examine the list of longdesc examples in the wild and draw
their own conclusions.

Particularly worth examining is whether there are any examples where
using a normal link instead of a longdesc link would not deliver an
immediate, significant improvement in accessibility and usability, as
these could provide a basis for designing a new language feature - if
they can't already be solved more effectively with existing
alternative techniques.

-Matt

Received on Sunday, 23 September 2012 18:07:55 UTC