Re: example spec text for longdesc

Hi Henri,

- public-html-a11y per  Philip's request [1]

Thank you, Henri for sharing your expertise. I appreciate at it very much,

>> 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.)

Do you think that it would be a good idea for the spec to have
language for conformance checking tools to do such checks if longdesc
is reinstated into HTML?

> 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.

Use cases are at:
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/InstateLongdesc#Use_Cases

What are appropriate way to solve the formal use cases?
http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/ld.html#uc

Thanks again.

Best Regards,
Laura

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Mar/0183.html

-- 
Laura L. Carlson