Re: [A11y] Using Longdesc, will it fly?

I have been away for a few days and am playing catch up. I have some
brief comments on @longdesc below.

Because of poor support for @longdesc it just doesn't really work in
practice. However in many ways it is a sound idea.

> - Provide a link to the longdesc page with a normal text link. Have a
> link that says "Text description of this image" is available on a
> separate page.

> - Make the complex image itself a link to the long description page. 

IMO, neither of these are ideal, they put a burden on the user and are
just rather inelegant.

> - Put the image description directly in the context of the document
> where the image occurs. 

IMO a good approach, but not always do-able as there _may_ not be a
suitable context for the description.

A solution may be to try to improve both UA/Vendor support for
@longdesc, so authors can add it to an image when they need to. They
will not always need it so there won't always be a code bloat and the
user won't have to wander off to find a separate page.

Josh

Received on Friday, 29 June 2007 08:59:09 UTC