- From: John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>
- Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:56:14 -0800
- To: "'Paul Cotton'" <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com>, "'Laura Carlson'" <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, "'Sam Ruby'" <rubys@intertwingly.net>, "'Maciej Stachowiak'" <mjs@apple.com>
- Cc: "'HTML WG'" <public-html@w3.org>
Paul Cotton wrote: > > The Chairs will process this request early next week when we can > convene a meeting with all three co-chairs present. > Thank you for this update Paul. In earlier revert decisions, the Chairs have noted that there were "multiple requests" brought forward for those other revert requests (for example here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Oct/0068.html), and so based on that prior statement, I would like to add my name in support to those requesting this revert. Justification: as has previously been brought forward to the Working Group [1][2], hidden text (i.e. text not visible on screen) is flattened to string text _per the various Accessibility APIs_ (and beyond the reach of HTML5), and for that reason any text referenced in this manner LOSES ANY AND ALL HTML MARKUP constructs, including but not limited to the anchor element (links), list markup, data tables (text descriptions of pie charts, etc.) and attributes such as @lang (<span lang="de">Zugänglichkeit</span>), which is an important consideration for both accessibility and internationalization requirements. Continuing to support this change is *actively harmful* to both of those requirements, as it would suggest to authors that this technique is benign (and as others such as Laura rightly fear, thus an acceptable alternative to @longdesc and further justification to drop @longdesc), which can be strongly argued it is not. Thank you. JF [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Feb/0415.html [2] http://www.w3.org/wiki/A11yTF/longdescresponse#Potential_for_Harm
Received on Friday, 27 January 2012 05:56:56 UTC