Re: Canvas uses requiring accessibility support

On Tue, 22 Nov 2011, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> 
> However since Ian started the page, I'll leave it to him to say if he 
> agrees with this reasoning and if it would be ok to change the 
> introduction of the wiki page to reflect it.

Your reasining seems about right, though it sounds like I'd be a little 
more ready to err on the side of "using canvas for this is just 
inappropriate" than you would. For example, it seems quite clear to me 
that trying to write a word processor in canvas, for instance, is just a 
fool's errand. The list of reasons why it's a bad idea are extensively 
documented, including in the spec itself which gives a 16-item bulleted 
list of reasons to not do a text editor in canvas.

Canvas has legitimate use cases, as does much of HTML, but that doesn't 
mean we should support _all_ use cases for _all_ features. For example, 
it's inappropriate to use an image map to make a checkbox, and we 
shouldn't support such a use case for image maps. It's inappropriate to 
use <h1>s to make a list, and we shouldn't support that use case for 
headings. It's inapproriate to use <span style=""> to make a coloured 
ASCII art penguin, and we shouldn't support that use case for <span>. We 
should only support use cases for elements where they make sense.

Filling out the "Limitations" section of the wiki page would be hugely 
helpful in determining how we can improve canvas:

   http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Canvas#Limitations_of_real-world_use_cases

Note: Just putting links in the use cases section is not sufficient.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 24 November 2011 02:24:04 UTC