Re: rationale for preserving longdesc in HTMLx [Re: dropping longdesc attribute]

Gregory's post is excellent, with good examples and ancillary links. I
recommend it to any that have not already read it. [1]

I particularly liked the following:

>  a caption pre-supposes that one
> can also perceive the object being captioned (that is, put into context);
> just as a TABLE without a summary pre-supposes that one can also 
> perceive the data sets being table-ized

As Gregory points out there are just some situations which really do
need a LONGDESC and the best we can do is to find a way of rendering the
content to the user in a way that does not disrupt the user experience
or disorientate. It would be great if the LONGDESC   contents could be
parsed by the browser and rendered by the UA in a more harmonious manner
and there are experiments (such as link to Patrick's Firefox plug-in)
exploring this.  However, the thought also struck me that if users, say
students etc, who are maybe used to how to access the LONGDESC and don't
find it troublesome, and can re-orientate themselves quickly etc then
maybe its OK, and doesn't need to be changed/modified/improved/dropped
at all?

I think many of my concerns regarding LONGDESC could be motivated by
usability rather than accessibility concerns.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0640.html

Received on Friday, 29 June 2007 10:05:26 UTC