RE: ISSUE-30 (Longdesc) Change Proposal

Jonas Sicking wrote:
> 
> Why not simply say that if the IDREF points to an element that is a
> link, then that link provides the description.
> 
> This forces authors to consider putting the link to the description in
> the normal flow of the page, thus making it accessible to everyone,
> not just users of AT tools. Something which usually is a win.

And often considered a fail too.  I've argued the 'design' implications
and criteria before, and once again point to the CSSquirrel example of an
author explicitly not wanting to have text on screen with his complex
image.  You can argue all you want that we should teach Squirrel that
having the text onscreen is a better fallback for his complex image (I
disagree BTW, given "how" he is using this tool - where his fallback is
not a direct "description", as it also heavily relies on imparting the
dialog of the comic strip - content that would be visually redundant to
sighted users), but instead, we offer him @longdesc, which solved his
exact problem, and works today in most UAs that *need* this solution.
Win/win!  

To paraphrase Josh, let's resurface this under-used but none-the-less
existent cow path, and be done.  ARIA is great, but I'm getting this
distinct impression that what is being suggested is that we 'split off'
ARIA and accessibility the same way that the HTML5 effort has spun out
other aspects like RDFa and Microformats... what next - HTML+ARIA?

> 
> For the cases when rendering the link is not desired, the link can
> simply be hidden using CSS or the @hidden attribute. Or you can place
> the link in the <head> which is never rendered.

Aren't you the same person arguing for a 'simple' explanation and message?
Here you just introduced 3 "or" statements (CSS, 'hidden', place link in
<head>), vs. the single statement for @longdesc (add longdesc="URI").  I
think you are fighting against @longdesc just to fight against it.

JF

Received on Friday, 30 October 2009 16:01:29 UTC