- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:56:04 +0200
- To: public-html@w3.org, "Matthew Turvey" <mcturvey@gmail.com>
On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:54:07 +0200, Matthew Turvey <mcturvey@gmail.com> wrote: > This is why the RNIB's Surf Right standard explicitly recommends *not* > using longdesc, and WebAIM recommends using a duplicate link if using > longdesc. Longdesc is not available to all users, so you cannot rely > on it to deliver a "a reliable and effective user experience." I understand the recommendation for a duplicate link. This has an analogy in the "skip to content" links that have been necessary until HTML5's new elements for improved page structure is reflected in a better navigation interface in browsers. But that analogy goes a little further. Right now those elements are basically useless in terms of delivering a "a reliable and effective user experience." I don't see any possible justification for assuming that one therefore shouldn't use them. > My understanding is PFWG members support obsoleting longdesc, but some > members believe we need more time to properly deprecate it. Is that > correct? I am a person who supports, in the long term, deprecating longdesc. I don't speak for the PFWG as a whole. > Could you answer the questions from Sam's email? > > 1) WHO needs more time? Tool developers (CMS, plugins, extensions, authoring systems, …) whose tools generate or consume longdesc. Content authors who rely on documentation that includes longdesc. Content producers whose workflow currently includes generating longdesc, whether manually or because of their toolchain. Teachers, Documentation specialists and "regulators" (people setting organisational or corporate policies as well as governments) who rely on finished standards. > 2) How much time would they LIKE? Hard to say, but I would guess (based on the apparent time it takes to deprecate a feature from the Web) 5-10 years, assuming that a functional replacement is agreed within the next 3 years. > 3) How much time could they LIVE WITH? They could live with it being deprecated tomorrow. It has little likely practical impact on their workflows, if the ubiquity of non-conformant content is aything to go by. > 4) What would be the IMPACT in terms of negative effects if they were > not provided that time? If they are not provided the time to make an adjustment, the most likely impact will be a continued disregard for conformance to the specification, as irrelevant to the real world. It seems unlikely that many implementations that offer the functionality will bother to remove it any time soon (i.e. faster than the time they would have changed over as described above) just because the spec changes, unless there is some reason to believe that most of the user agents that support it now will stop doing so. In addition, it is likely that without an agreed way to provide the functionality of longdesc, there will be a continued fragmentation in the solutions tried, resulting in a drop in overall inefficacy of the web in providing necessary information to people who need it, or can make productive use of it. > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Apr/0181.html Cheers Chaals -- Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
Received on Thursday, 16 June 2011 16:56:34 UTC