[Bug 10455] Mint a describedby attribute for the img element

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10455





--- Comment #11 from John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>  2010-08-28 03:45:25 ---
Edward O'Connor wrote:
> My question is, in what specific ways, if any, would such a
> describedby="" attribute differ from longdesc=""?

1) It would have a 'universal' control that all users, not just blind users,
could use to easily access extended descriptions. We could *mandate* that all
browsers place access into a contextual menu, or *mandate* that a browser
tool-bar include a button of some kind that would be grayed-out, but would
become active if one or more images in a page had longer descriptions
associated to them: perhaps if more than 1 image like this existed on the page,
the button would expand a menu that provided direct access to any and all of
those descriptions - a 'drop-down' like rendering or such. I personally believe
however that we might also want to leave the User Agents to develop solutions
that would scale to different platforms/implementations - so that on a
hand-held device it might be done one-way, whilst on a desk-top version of the
browser another way. But the biggest and most important difference is mandated
and common User Agent support for the new attribute, given that some browsers
today still do not support HTML 4's @longdesc attribute (and we really can't
blame page authors for that)

2) In the only real browser implementation of @longdesc support today, to
access the long description for sighted users one must place your cursor over
the image to then access the right-click contextual menu. (Screen readers
announce the existence of the link when announcing the image's alt value, so
for Assistive Technology that works agnosticly with any browser, this is less
an issue for that class of technology)  

This new attribute then should also be available via key-board access for
sighted users not using a mouse, including (but not exclusively) users with
mobility impairments. So the attribute would also make the image focus-able to
keyboard use (or conversely, if a browser tool-bar button was chosen, then that
button, when in active state, could also be focused on via keyboard tabbing).

3) Currently aria-describedby can only be linked to IDREFs, whereas the new
attribute must be able to be linked to both IDREFS and URI's

And now, I will ask you a specific question: do you disagree with any of the
articulated user requirements? If yes, which user-requirement do you disagree
with, and why?

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Received on Saturday, 28 August 2010 03:45:30 UTC