RE: SVG markup thoughts

From: Fred Esch [mailto:fesch@us.ibm.com] 
Sent: 15 May 2015 13:46



I don't know if background is a good role to keep, but in experimenting with markup for navigation and thinking about personalization/accommodations for sighted users, I am experimenting with roles that I think may help in those situations. 

I see background being used a couple of ways. For folks with cognitive disabilities, it could be used to focus their attention to a general area of interest.  For low vision users, it may be needed to help figure out what is the background for text so the contrast can be increased. To me tweaking a background has less impact than tweaking an graphic object that represents data like a bar, area, or scatterplot point, or even a geographic boundary for a state. Lots of things have backgrounds that could be difficult to identify if no markup helps you. Panelled charts, charts-in-charts, STEM diagrams all need help identifying backgrounds from data. 



These are good things to consider, but they feel more like authoring guidance than anything. A “background” is a visual/design concept. Indicating it in the markup is one thing, but giving it a semantic role is another.

 

Léonie.

 

-- 

Léonie Watson - Senior accessibility engineer

@LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup PacielloGroup.com