Re: conflation of issues or convergence of interests?

Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
> 
> Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> 
>> * Providing an ordinary link to the description alongside the video
>>   pro: already possible and easy to do.
>>   pro: makes it available to anyone who wants it, not just those with
>>        assistive technology that exposes it.
>>   con: ?
> 
> con: "alongside" is too vague. Are we talking about proximity in the 
> markup, and if so do we need to define this proximity? Do they need to 
> be immediately adjacent? Or just within the same parent container? Or in 
> separate block level elements, but both in turn wrapped in another block 
> level container or a certain type, or...?
> con: the relationship between the video and the link is not explicit...
> con: even if proximity was defined, this would create some "special" 
> grammatical or syntactical rule for HTML:...

I think you're over thinking the solution too much.  Does there really 
need to be an explicit association between the video and the link to 
it's textual alternative?  What problem would such an explicit 
association really solve?

Look at any video on YouTube, for example.  There is no explicit 
association in the markup between the video and its metadata, such as 
the user who uploaded it, the description, tags, number of times it has 
been viewed or favourited, etc.  Yet the user is still able to determine 
that they are related to the video.

I think an implicit association that the user can determine based on the 
context is sufficient.  I didn't explicitly define "alongside" because 
it's not necessary.  The exact markup used would have to be determined 
on a case by case basis.  But, I guess, an appropriate definition for 
"alongside" would be something like: somewhere on the page where the 
user can clearly identify the purpose of the link and its relation to 
the video based on its context.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Saturday, 28 July 2007 05:08:36 UTC