- From: Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk>
- Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 05:59:42 +0000
- To: public-html@w3.org
Andrew Fedoniouk wrote: > For human this markup: > <button><u>O</u>pen</button> > plus associated behavior has clear semantic value and > <button accesskey="^O">Open</button> > is just nothing - user simply has no clue about that accesskey. > > Information that is unknown to particular person has > semantic value of zero for that person, isn't it? It's the user agent's duty to expose the semantics to the end user in an appropriate format. And, as suggested, since current UAs don't expose the accesskey, scripting can be used to patch this. The semantics might be unknown to the user, but not to the user agent. Compare this to your use (if I understand it correctly from your previous message): you use presentational markup to suggest a possible behaviour visually to the user, but rely on scripting to actually enact that behaviour. In your case, the semantics (the meaning or intent of that underline) are unknown to the user agent, so the user agent can't sensibly expose it to the end user beyond simply following the presentational markup. Say a UA wants to provide functionality that lists all current keyboard shortcuts for the current page/document. Using @accesskey semantics, it can simply parse the document and list all attributes found. But it wouldn't be able to simply list all <u> elements, as they may have been used for presentational purposes (as per their definition). This is the same reason why heading elements should be used to denote the structure of a document, rather than simply using presentational markup that makes text bigger/bolder/etc. The former has actual semantic meaning, while the other only has presentational value that, once rendered, may lead the user to *infer* semantic meaning...but it's not unequivocal for UAs to interpret. I'd still say that using the more accurate semantics of the markup language, and - where necessary - patching the visual presentation accordingly is preferable to doing the opposite. P -- Patrick H. Lauke ______________________________________________________________ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com ______________________________________________________________ Co-lead, Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ ______________________________________________________________ Take it to the streets ... join the WaSP Street Team http://streetteam.webstandards.org/ ______________________________________________________________
Received on Friday, 28 December 2007 06:00:02 UTC