Re: DIAGRAM project and image descriptions

As far as I can see aria-describedby addresses this use case. I
believe ARIA is no explicitly supported by HTML5 drafts.

/ Jonas

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 12:21 PM, Laura Carlson
<laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Geoff,
>
> This sounds like a very important use case to add to the change
> proposal to reinstate longdesc into HTML.
>
> Thank you very much for this new information.
>
> Best Regards,
> Laura
>
> On 2/25/11, Geoff Freed <geoff_freed@wgbh.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, everyone:
>>
>> Benetech, NCAM and the DAISY Consortium are currently collaborating on a
>> five-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education to help find
>> ways to make image descriptions in textbooks for print-disabled students
>> more effective and less costly.  You can read all about the project at
>> http://diagramcenter.org/ .
>>
>> Regarding the long-running discussions over image descriptions:  any new
>> version of HTML that lacks a mechanism for conveying long image descriptions
>> to users will be a severe blow to blind, visually impaired and
>> print-disabled users worldwide, as well as a huge setback to decades of work
>> done in the accessibility industry.  In addition to the arguments already
>> offered on these lists in favor of a long-description mechanism, bear in
>> mind that long descriptions are typically produced after the original
>> content has been published.  They are often likely be produced by volunteers
>> (via a variety of methods, including  crowdsourcing) and third parties who
>> are contracted to create sophisticated descriptions for complex images (such
>> as those found in science and math textbooks).  This is particularly true in
>> the case of online textbooks and digital textbooks. Without @longdesc, it
>> will be very difficult to incorporate descriptions into new or existing
>> textbooks or other content.
>>
>> Furthermore, those hosted descriptions will be living documents which may
>> need to be improved upon in a collaborative and moderated fashion. This is
>> particularly true in the case of e-books- volumes which have already been
>> downloaded by users could easily benefit from new, expanded or otherwise
>> updated image descriptions.
>>
>> If we want HTML to be a foundational standard for reading technologies, such
>> as e-books, then it is critical that @longdesc continue to be supported.
>> Even if @longdesc is reinstated as an interim technology while something new
>> is developed to replace it, it is still the best technology that the DIAGRAM
>> project (not to mention textbook publishers, universities and others around
>> the world) can build upon today to accomplish our objectives around
>> improving the accessibility of images in digital textbooks.
>>
>> Geoff Freed
>> WGBH/NCAM, on behalf of the DIAGRAM project
>
>
> --
> Laura L. Carlson
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 15 March 2011 21:14:57 UTC