Re: Revert Request

Jonas Sicking, Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:47:14 -0800:
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Laura Carlson wrote:

> Similarly:
> <table aria-describedby="desc">...</table>
> <div hidden id=desc>Description here</div>
> 
> and
> 
> <img longdesc="#desc" src="...">
> <div hidden id=desc>Description here</div>
> 
> This will work in all browsers. It works today.

Note that the spec allows the first but forbids the last - because it 
forbids linking with links. And note that the last *cannot* work unless 
the author also removes the @hidden - via JavaScript - when the 
@longdesc link is activated. [You have to remove it, because to ARIA 
supporting ATs, then @hidden is just a synonym for aria-hidden=true. 
Hence, to make it visually visible, does not mean that it becomes 
visible to AT.] 

> Forbidding this in the
> HTML 5 spec will only affect the people who chose A above,

[ A. Go read the aria specification? ]

In your CP, one of your arguments in favor of the removal of @longdesc, 
is that it will allow us to give authors a single, cross-host-language 
advice: use ARIA. This, you say, in contrast to @longdesc, which only 
works in HTML. Then note that @hidden only works in HTML. Whereas 
@aria-hidden works in SVG etc too.

Note as well that you use as argument that authors won't learn ARIA ... 
And note that some of the @longdesc supporters seem to be of the same 
opinion ... 

> So what if we do choose to forbid aria and other similar features from
> linking to hidden elements. What alternative are we proposing to
> people that want to have content which is only displayed to AT users?
> My impression is that we're suggesting that they use various
> attributes and methods that allow linking to external documents.

There is CSS display:none and CSS off screen placement, too ...

  ...
> Now, there are problems with using @hidden. As John Foliot often
> points out, including in this thread, browsers today have problems if
> the @hidden contents contains "rich content". But that's browsers
> today. Our goal for the HTML5 spec shouldn't be to document best
> practices for todays browsers. It should be to envision the technology
> which will produce the best and most accessible web and then codify
> that into a specification.
> 
> If implementations complain that this is too hard to implement then of
> course we might need to reconsider, but so far this has not happened.

Is there any progress to tell about? Is it enough specified how UAs 
should go about doing it?

AT/UAs do have problems with hidden stuff: If an <object> that is 
considered by the UA to be an image by the UA, then its fallback will 
be hidden from AT - because its role is seen to be role=img, and 
role=img makes the children hidden. Getting e.g. VoiceOver to render 
the fallback as mark-up, has so far been impossible.
-- 
Leif H Silli

Received on Tuesday, 31 January 2012 09:20:22 UTC