- From: Denis Boudreau (WebConforme) <dboudreau@webconforme.com>
- Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:21:10 -0400
- To: Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com>
- Cc: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, Doug Schepers <doug.schepers@vectoreal.com>, Monika Trebo <mtrebo@stanford.edu>, "Gregory J.Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, wai-xtech@w3.org
Morning, > On Jun 25, 2007, at 11:40 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote: >> Out of the suggestions so far, I like <a rel="longdesc"> the best. >> It would do something reasonable in existing UAs, could be applied >> to more than just images (videos or tables might merit a long >> description for instance) and would be accessed even in normal UAs >> without the use of accessibility tools, so would be more likely to >> be maintained. Arguably even today it is a better option than the >> img longdesc attribute. I could agree also. As long as we're improving the concept and we're not putting unnecessary pressure on user agents- and assistive technology vendors to reinvent something that was already working, I think dropping @longdesc could be considered. What we need to remember though is not to fall back into the same trap we just got out of with screen readers: it took a while for Jaws to implement the attribute properly. Now that it has, we're considering switching on to something else, whatever it may be. If it's for the sake of improvement, fine. Perfectly understandable. We should not acknowledge more importance to a screen reader than to any other tool (browser x, user agent y, etc.). It is not our problem it took them so long to implement @longdesc, but it's our responsability to take their efforts into consideration and not simply pull the rug under their feet - after all, it's not their best interest we should be thinking about, but those of the users they represent. As long as we're thiking of these users best interests and not what's easiest for browser vendors and authors, then i have no beef with dropping longdesc. -- Denis Boudreau, Directeur WebConforme / AccessibilitéWeb 1751 rue Richardson, bureau 3.501 Montréal (Qc), Canada H3K 1G6 Téléphone : +1 514.448.2650 Télécopieur : +1 514.667.2216 dboudreau@webconforme.com http://www.webconforme.com/
Received on Tuesday, 26 June 2007 14:21:48 UTC