- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:24:39 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
- Cc: Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com>, david.dailey@sru.edu, John Foliot <foliot@wats.ca>, HTML4All <list@html4all.org>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, "Michael(tm) Smith" <mike@w3.org>, wai-xtech@w3.org, Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>
On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Steven Faulkner wrote: > > > > I agree it wouldn't necessarily be obvious to the computer, but it's > > the user that matters, and I can't really see why the association > > wouldn't be obvious to the user. > > becasue being contiguous is a wek relationship and prone to error. for > example some AT use a heauristic to work out what it thinks a label for > a control is if its not explicitly associated using the for/id or title > attrbute. for a text input it looks for text to the left of the input an > announces that if it finds it. Works some of the time, dosn't work other > times. The AT user relies on the computer (AT) to recognize the > associations, thus an explcict association as supplied by the author is > usually a much more robust. > > = utility of aria-describedby Sure, I understand what aria-describedby is for (though in your example with a label and an input, HTML4 already provides a way to do that, as you point out). My point is that if a page says, say: <h2>Photograph 2</h2> <img src=321098412.jpeg> <p>View North East from 23 High Street.</p> ...then the user experience in a speech would be something like: PHOTOGRAPH TWO. (Nondescript image.) View north east from twenty three high street. ...and in a text browser something like: ** Photograph 2 ** [Image] View North East from 23 High Street. It seems like this is a fine experience given a tough situation, and I can't see how any other markup would make it particularly better, be that aria-describedby or alt="" or anything. (I _could_ see how the experience could be better with some help from the user agent, but that doesn't require any new markup.) -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Friday, 18 April 2008 07:26:23 UTC