Re: ISSUE 30 @longdesc use cases

OK, I hesitate to ask, point this out.  It is perhaps a minor point.

There is an assumption/assertion here that a long description is hugely relevant but only through accessibility provisions.  But there may easily be puzzled users who do not have vision issues.  There is nothing wrong with a page that says "A detailed description of this can be found _here_.", and indeed this will, in fact, benefit a number of users other than those using screen readers (users new to the subject, in some cases, for example).  Not using the attribute does not preclude you from building informatively constructed web sites, does it? I don't find "A detailed description of this can be found _here_." 'traumatic' or 'confusing', myself, in general.

On Aug 23, 2010, at 14:02 , Joshue O Connor wrote:

> To explain - I will quote Barry directly from the CFIT website.
> 
> "Double-negative" because longdesc is not being used here — but I would
> have liked to use it, and its use would have been absolutely
> appropriate! It's just that weak user-agent support meant that using it
> would potentially have left the long description actually unavailable to
> people who might benefit from it. So instead, I decided to compromise
> (somewhat) the experience of people who already could perceive the
> graphical image perfectly well, and exposed the long description for all
> users (even though it is redundant for the majority). This decision
> then, logically, had the further effect of requiring an explanation —
> for those majority users — of what a long description is and why — which
> explanation, in turn, is redundant for those users who would normally
> actually benefit from a long description!
> 
> I humbly suggest that such a convoluted (nay, "traumatic"!) design
> decision — genuinely existing "in the wild" — should count as legitimate
> evidence of the use-case-need for longdesc!?" [3]
> 

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Monday, 23 August 2010 12:34:43 UTC