Re: PROPOSAL: Procedure to Promote Progress With Accessibility Issues in HTML5

Joshue O Connor wrote:
> Ian Hickson wrote:
>>  (I have been informed that in fact the WAI groups are more interested in voting on 
>> whether summary="" is in or out than on voting on what accessibility 
>> solutions should be used to make tables accessible, for instance.)

Ian: such use of passive tense is unnecessarily provocative.  One 
possibility is that your unnamed source or sources are mistaken.

> and again.
> 
>> Can the WAI commit to approaching accessibility issues holistically, 
>> instead of following one-solution agendas as I was recently informed is 
>> explicitly being done with the summary="" issue?
> 
> What is that supposed to mean? We are /all/ about holistic solutions,
> however the current vote (as I understand it) is to be about @summary as
> it currently is. While we (PF) do wish to talk about engineering a
> better solution (as I am sure we can come up with one) this is /not/ on
> the table at the moment.

Joshue: clearly holistic means different things to different people. 
Identifying text as specifically targeting a set of individuals, and 
thereby excluding others, is apparently not something that some 
considers "holistic".  Others feel that identifying text as being 
potentially redundant for those who are fully sighted, and thereby 
providing an option to render or hide this information based on user 
preference and abilities is the result a holistic approach to the issue.

This situation is made more complicated by the fact that @summary is 
already implemented by a number of tools, had limited uptake on the 
public web, and often appears to be misused.

Action 128 is assigned to you.  My suggestion is that you focus on it.

> Cheers
> 
> Josh

- Sam Ruby

Received on Monday, 20 July 2009 14:45:26 UTC