- From: John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>
- Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:36:25 -0700 (PDT)
- To: "'Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis'" <bhawkeslewis@googlemail.com>, "'William Loughborough'" <wloughborough@gmail.com>
- Cc: "'David Singer'" <singer@apple.com>, "'Steven Faulkner'" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, "'Maciej Stachowiak'" <mjs@apple.com>, "'Sam Ruby'" <rubys@intertwingly.net>, "'Ian Hickson'" <ian@hixie.ch>, <public-html@w3.org>, "'W3C WAI-XTECH'" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, <public-canvas-api@w3.org>
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote: > > which of the following should the web specification designers > do and why: > > (a) Pick a random option. > (b) Pick the option that involves extra author action. > (c) Pick the option that involves no extra author action. > > It seems Steven is effectively saying they should pick the option that > involves no extra action, because he accepts the prediction that this > will lead to more content being accessible. Most would agree - if both options produced equal results. However, often Option C from above will only get you so far, whilst in HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1 there are additional optional mechanisms that, when used, will achieve even better results. Many of these options are perceived as being under attack in HTML5 (and perception is often more 'real' than reality), which is the root of much of the acrimony. @summary is a great poster-child, but we could re-visit the @scope vs. headers/id discussion as well; that actually serves as a better illustration. So... If Option C = 80% 'accessibility' but Option B = 98% 'accessibility' then both options should be available and present in the language, allowing non-vested authors the default of Option C, but also allowing vested authors the ability to choose Option B, the option of choice. We're not always getting that from the spec. JF
Received on Monday, 24 August 2009 20:37:10 UTC