[Bug 21566] User agents must present longdesc through normal interfaces.

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21566

--- Comment #4 from Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@yandex-team.ru> ---
Hi Boris, 

To answer your first question, whoever assesses a claim of conformance decides
what a "normal interface" is. Since there are functionalities in browsers that
work through context menus, others via menu items, etc, I think it would be
hard to argue that an image properties dialogue is not part of "the normal
interfaces". (I think that would be inconvenient for users, but that's not the
same as being non-conformant).

The requirement is vague because I think there is still a lot of room for
browsers to differentiate by *how* they make longdesc available. Like with
accesskey, the best implementations currently rank as "not very good really"
which still distinguishes them from the worst.

There are already plenty of vague requirements about making things work - users
are meant to be able to interact with things that have click listeners, user
agents are meant to present either the image represented by an img element, if
there is one, or the content of the alt attribute, form submit buttons are
meant to submit forms, etc. I don't think we are doing anything fundamentally
different here.

And no, it is explicitly not about Accessibility APIs - there is a separate
requirement for that which is currently at SHOULD rather than MUST. It is here
because we received repeated comments (with sound justifications and use cases)
that it needed to be really clear that this is for all users, not just those
using a screenreader.

NVDA resisted implementing longdesc for *years* because they hoped that
browsers would do what this is asking. 

In the end this spec will survive or die based on whether it gets implemented.
If we make must requirements and nobody fulfils them, it fails. On the other
hand if we make requirements and some particular software doesn't meet them, it
isn't as if the world ends.

I'm quite strongly opposed to reducing the level of requirement just so
everyone can claim conformance without actually doing what a spec asks - that
gives a lot of conformant, implementation but at the expense of any useful
interoperability.

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Received on Wednesday, 3 April 2013 19:46:23 UTC