Re: ISSUE-30 (Longdesc) Change Proposal

Jonas Sicking wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie> wrote:
>> Jonas Sicking wrote:
>>> Given the trajectory for @longdesc over the past 10 years, I think
>>> there's good reason to believe that implementations will support ARIA
>>> before @longdesc sees any significant uptake.
>> I would be inclined to agree, but are we taking about vendors or
>> authors?
> 
> I was saying that I think that implementaions will support ARIA before
> authors will start significantly using either @aria-describedby or
> @longdesc. Thus I don't think implementation support will be a
> limiting factor for authors.

Yes, me neither.

>> If (as Chaals pointed out), implementation in a browser may be
>> relatively trivial and /if/ it is a case that it could be beneficial for
>> @longdesc to be dusted off and revitalized (as such) - I think this may
>> be worth exploring.
>>
>> For authors, re-animating use of @longdesc would tie into the paving the
>> cowpaths mantra - there may not have been a cow down this road for
>> sometime, but /if/ there is a ghost of a path I would be interested in
>> exploring it.
> 
> I agree that if there is a cowpath we should definitely explore it,
> and quite likely standardize it. This is why I think that keeping @alt
> in the spec is the right thing to do.

Good stuff.

> However I don't see a cowpath for @longdesc given how little it's been used.

It would be a good idea for us to look at why this was the case, and
learn from it.

> Looking at the "ghost path" for @longdesc seems to indicate that its
> syntax was a poor one given that even the people that used @longdesc,
> missunderstood it to the extent that they didn't even fill out a URI.

That is a possibility. Though I think it has more to with @alt being
more "do-able" (in the sense that it can be short and snappy), @longdesc
content can be far more time consuming to author - due to being more
verbose etc so authors may often not have been bothered. Interesting to
hear your idea about poor syntax however.

Cheers

Josh

Received on Friday, 30 October 2009 16:07:10 UTC