- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:17:11 -0700
- To: Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com>
- Cc: Edward O'Connor <hober0@gmail.com>, HTMLWG WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Mar 22, 2010, at 5:02 PM, Shelley Powers wrote: > > But then, there isn't fallback for the reader to understand what the > heck is going on. I'm not sure what you mean. In Safari on Mac, when the VoiceOver cursor is on the <pre> element, VoiceOver speaks "ASCII art of a butterfly; image". That seems exactly right to me. VoiceOver is fully aware that the pre element is an image and treats it as such. I believe the results will be similar in any browser + screen reader combo that correctly supports ARIA. (For anyone who doesn't feel like doing View Source, I used <pre role="img" aria-labeledby="caption">, with a later element that has id="caption" which is precisely what ARIA recommends for cases like this. If I chose to, I could also hide the text equivalent from visual media but it seemed better not to.) > > I don't want to debate my change proposal before I submit it, but I > think a screen shot of the ASCII art, such as the following provides > the art without the gibberish. And a person can always link the ascii > art, if for some reason it's absolutely essential to include all the > characters. Or they don't have to use figure. > > http://burningbird.net/graphics/ascii.jpg I don't see how an <img> element pointing to that JPEG would lead to a superior accessibility experience to what I posted. If your Change Proposal argues that it does, then I believe it will be making a false claim. At the same time, linking a JPEG has some downsides: - It won't work in text-only browsers. - It can't be copied and pasted into a plain text file. - It consumes more bandwidth. - It's more work for the content author if they already have the ASCII art in ASCII form. - It gives worse results for users with partially impaired vision when applying full-page zoom. - It can't take advantage of sub-pixel antialiasing settings appropriate to the display. It could be argued that these are relatively minor downsides, but I don't see why anyone would want to incur them for literally zero benefit. And I certainly do not think the spec should recommend such an approach. (It's true that you could use <pre role="img"> outside <figure>, but they could also use <img> outside <figure>, so that argument by itself doesn't make the case for anything.) Regards, Maciej
Received on Tuesday, 23 March 2010 00:17:44 UTC