Re: longdesc - beside the box

Hi Benjamin,

> You could get similar benefits by reusing "longdesc":
>
>    1. Suggesting interactive UAs make elements with "longdesc" focusable.
>    2. Suggesting interactive UAs provide a mode in which elements with
> "longdesc" are indicated.
>    3. Allowing "longdesc" on other elements that you want to allow to
> have long descriptions.

Yes. A bug was filed last august to create a new HTML attribute. It is
Bug 10455: Mint a describedby attribute for the img element.
http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10455

But I have not pursued it as seemed to reinvent the wheel.
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/InstateLongdesc#New_HTML_Attribute

Benjamin, your suggestion regarding  interactive UAs providing a mode
in which elements with "longdesc" are indicated is right on target.
The spec text that I drafted tries to address this in the second
bullet point:

"User agents should allow users to follow such description links. To
obtain the corresponding description link, the value of the attribute
must be resolved relative to the element. User agents should provide
the user an option or preference to access the content via a device
independent mechanism. For specific details consult the User Agent
Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG 2.0) and its implementation documents.
Since an img element may be within the content of an a element, the
user agent's mechanism in the user interface for accessing the
"longdesc" resource of the former must be different than the mechanism
for accessing the href resource of the latter."
http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld-spec-text.html

Is there a way to make that clearer? Your suggestion of how to improve
that text or any other parts of the spec text or the change proposal
itself would be most welcome.
http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld-spec-text.html
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/InstateLongdesc

Thanks.

Best Regards,
Laura

-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Monday, 25 April 2011 17:23:39 UTC