Re: example spec text for longdesc

On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 07:51 -0500, Laura Carlson wrote:
> Henri, how difficult would it be for conformance checkers to inspect a
> longdesc URL and issue a warning if it suspects that the description
> resource is unlikely to contain a description of the image (i.e., if
> the URL is an empty string,

Easy.

> or points to the same URL as the src
> attribute,

Easyish.

> And
> how difficult would it be for conformance checkers to issue errors if
> the longdesc URL has certain file suffixes, such as .gif, .jpeg, .png
> etc.)?

Easy though bogus as far as the theory of URLs go. (In theory, you
should deference the URL and check the content type, but that would make
conformance dependent on external resources, which is kinda
undesirable.) 

In any case, approaching longdesc from the point of view of ease of
conformance checker implementation is the wrong way to approach it.
Frankly, all this seems to presume that longdesc must axiomatically be
preserved and then rationalizations are sought to justify the
conclusion.

The right way is to consider what problems users face and what are
appropriate ways to solve those problems--not to focus on the
preservation of something that has been labeled as an accessibility
feature.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Friday, 25 March 2011 12:04:30 UTC