- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:14:49 -0600
- To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com>, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>, William Loughborough <wloughborough@gmail.com>, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>, Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
On Jul 26, 2009, at 8:52 PM, Ian Hickson wrote: > On Sun, 26 Jul 2009, Shelley Powers wrote: >> >> Ian is fully aware of the issues, reasons, and so on. If he isn't I >> suggest he spend time searching on @summary in these lists. > > Maybe I missed an important e-mail. Could you point me to the e-mail > that > shows the reasoning and data behind the idea that including and > continuing > to encourage authors to use the summary="" attribute would improve > overall > accessibility of the Web beyond the status quo? > > The position argued, in detail, with data [1] to support the current > text > in the specification is that encouraging the summary="" attribute to > be > used actually harms the overall accessibility of the Web. To my > knowledge, > nobody has provided a sound counter-argument to this. If I have missed > such a counter-argument, please send me a link. The e-mail cited above > includes explicit statements regarding the kind of data and > explanations > that would lead to a substantial change in the document I am editing. > > [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jul/0148.html For what it's worth, even though I don't entirely agree with the current spec language for summary=""(*), I do agree with Ian on this point. It's been pretty well established that summary="" is often used wrong, and there is good reason to believe that pushing authors towards other alternatives will give better results. As far as I can tell, no one has even tried to make a reasoned case that use of summary="" should be encouraged. Some have cast doubt on the evidence against the effectiveness of summary="". But that does not amount to a positive argument for its effectiveness, either in absolute terms, or compared to other techniques. Others have argued that summary="" can be used correctly by domain experts exercising special care. But that's not really an argument for encouraging use of summary="", just an argument that it should be conforming to satisfy these expert uses. And indeed it is conforming. But discouraged, because it is shown to be dangerous in the hands of non-experts. Indeed, even the strongest advocates of summary="" seem to concede that it is flawed and would like to seek alternatives, although they don't necessarily find the ones now in the spec. So I think it's fair to say, no one has really made a case for why summary="" should be conforming and encouraged, as opposed to conforming and discouraged. Can anyone explain the harm if future authors mostly describe table structure using <caption> or aria- describedby, instead of summary=""? Regards, Maciej (*) - I think the spec should describe the intended purpose of summary="" and explain why it generally shouldn't be used over other alternatives, because that would help some authors to make a more informed choice, and as far as I can tell would have no significant downside. But in my opinion this change would be editorial, not substantial, so I'm personally not inclined to take it to the mat.
Received on Monday, 27 July 2009 03:15:47 UTC