[Bug 21564] Allow ATs/UAs to use heuristics to suppress presentation of erroneous or pointless longdescs

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21564

--- Comment #2 from Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> ---
(In reply to comment #1)
> In general I think this is a bad idea, and in practice I think that unless
> it is extremely carefully phrased, it provides a way to justify not
> supporting longdesc: "The vast majority of longdescs are useless, so a valid
> heuristic is to say that if there is a longdesc it is useless and suppress
> it". Easy to implement, likely to be recommended by some strong and
> respected advocates of HTML, but I think highly counter-productive to
> accessibility in general and the purposes of this specification in
> particular.
> 
> It might make sense to modify this proposal to provide an exception case for
> 21566, but IMHO only when it has been *determined* that the specific
> longdesc is useless. (There's still weasel-room with that proposal, but this
> spec is not going to solve all the problems of human behaviour, it will just
> tell people who want to get this right how to do so.)

I understand your thinking. But as for those 96% procent of 'useless', then not
all of those are not necessarily useless. Useless and wrong are not the same,
if UAs use the MAY option to present textual content.

Also, I think that the critical voices will in general be more favorable if it
is shown that longdesc is in fact something that users can rely on.

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Received on Wednesday, 3 April 2013 15:40:45 UTC