Re: Proposal for action Re: Call for Consensus (CfC): Comments on the MSE CR

I really dont want to have the longdesc debate again, do you?  It is a W3C
recommendation.  It is part of HTML5.  It satisfies the requirements for
this particular problem.  They should use it.

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 4:39 AM, Chaals McCathie Nevile <
chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 12:54:21 +0300, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com> wrote:
>
>
>> 1.)     The diagram in this document should have a longdesc.
>>>
>>
>> -1. This is why we can't have nice things.
>>
>
> Well-described images, and descriptions people could readily find, and
> avoid, at will, would indeed be nice.
>
> Even better accessibility would be even nicer, but it seems we can't have
> that soon :(
>
> If possible, the diagram itself should also be created using accessible
>>> SVG markup.
>>>
>>
>> Is your recommendation intention really SVG+longdesc? That's how this
>> reads.
>>
>
> That's what was proposed at the meeting. In particular, VoiceOver users
> generally can't get the benefit of a longdesc, but it is possible to make
> some types of SVG somewhat accessible to them, and the image here seems to
> be a good candidate (if Safari follows SVG links and Firefox implements
> tabindex). Meanwhile, users of other screenreaders can get a longdesc, but
> except for blink-based browsers it's pretty hard to make something like SVG
> usefully accessible to them.
>
> Instead of an overly prescriptive proposal of one possible solution ("You
>> must use @longdesc, and ideally SVG."), this should be phrased, ~"The
>> diagram in the document should be made accessible." How they choose to do
>> that is irrelevant. Neither @longdesc nor SVG is a requirement for
>> accessibility.
>>
>
> That's correct in principle, and I would be happy if we made that
> statement. But we'll then get a question on how to do so in practice, at
> which point it seems we come to inherent accessibility, which means SVG,
> but also doesn't work very well for most people so we need a fallback,
> which is a description. For obvious reasons people should be able to
> identify and skip over the description the third or fourth time they read
> the document. You are right that longdesc isn't the only way to achieve
> that, and in many cases it *should* be used in conjunction with a
> description that's part of the normal page content.
>
> You should also include some examples of how to make both vector and
>> bitmap images accessible. You're welcome to use the options I've compiled
>> here. Note: 2 of the 5 examples do use SVG.
>>
>
> I think it would be more useful to include some examples of how to make
> the particular image under discussion more accessible. I'd be happy to look
> for a bit of time to try and do this. I'd be equally happy if several
> people had a go, so we could compare concrete examples and try to find all
> the problems and good points in each.
>
> cheers
>
> --
> Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
>  chaals@yandex-team.ru - - - Find more at http://yandex.com
>
>


-- 
Shane McCarron
Managing Director, Applied Testing and Technology, Inc.