Re: Nothing is really hidden

At 15:00  -0500 1/07/09, Shelley Powers wrote:
>True, there may be some tools that automatically fill in the summary
>attribute with incorrect values, and the web page author is not
>allowed to edit the field via the tool. But I would say that was a
>problem with the tool, not necessarily @summary. As far as I know, the
>value isn't hidden from either the author or QA, regardless. At a
>minimum, they could check the value by looking at the page source.
>

But if they are authoring bad values and not realizing that they are 
bad, seeing those values won't make them realize.  Nothing they are 
doing depends on them being usable, alas.

>You know, and this could only be me, but I don't use IE, except
>briefly to test a page. I'm learning how to correctly add alt text
>more from discussions on web sites, and my own increasing interest in
>making my sites more accessible. My use of alt isn't perfect, but is
>improving. The fact that it shows up on a tooltip has never made a
>difference.
>
>Perhaps others have felt that alt as tooltip in IE has helped them
>improve their alt text.

I'm sure there are some who have seen "an image" pop up as the alt 
text (or something equally vague) and realized that they can do 
better -- or had images and wondered why nothing popped up for their 
images when it does for other people's, and that inspired them to 
find out why and fix it.

>I digress, though.  To return to the topic of this thread, even when
>@summary isn't displayed in say, Opera, it isn't hidden, because it is
>exposed via JAWS, or other AT device. That's more the point I'm trying
>to make: summary isn't 'hidden', it's just targeted to a specific
>subset of the user community.

You're still missing the point;  it's hidden to the majority of 
authors and QA departments, who, for the most part, do not use or 
know how to use AT.
-- 
David Singer
Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Thursday, 2 July 2009 10:17:25 UTC