Re: Alternate proposal for ISSUE-30 longdesc

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
> On Feb 22, 2010, at 6:06 AM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>> Personally I'm not a big fan of this argument either. I much prefer to
>> have a feature be conforming if there are technical reasons to do so.
>> In this case, if it helps accessibility.
>
> I think the specific situation here is that for sites using it, we'd like
> them to thoughtfully review what they are doing, not just rip it out or
> replace with a poor aria-describedby in a panic over losing their
> conformance badge.

Do you feel the same way about ripping out other attributes that are
going from conforming to non-conforming? Such as the width/height
attributes?

Also, no one is forced to make any urgent changes. I would imagine
that most people that care about conformance will transition to HTML5
at a pace they see fit. After all, it unlikely that HTML5 will
transition to REC any time soon given the the requirement of two
interoperable implementations.

> For the sites using it properly (granted, a tiny minority
> of all sites using longdesc), we would be breaking their valid reliance on a
> previously encouraged feature. It seems pretty much analogous to the summary
> attribute, where we are also (in the current spec) discouraging it in favor
> of arguably better solutions. I think this approach will be more likely to
> help sites make the transition effectively. In that regard, I think
> conforming-with-a-warning will likely improve accessibility over
> nonconforming status.

I don't understand how helping people out with the transition to using
things other than longdesc is connected to longdesc being conformant
or not. I.e. wherever we put such transition advice, be it in spec or
in validators, seems like we could put it there either if longdesc is
conforming or not?

/ Jonas

Received on Monday, 22 February 2010 14:49:05 UTC