- From: SVG Working Group Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org>
- Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:18:56 +0000 (GMT)
- To: public-svg-wg@w3.org
ISSUE-2114 (title-desc-accessibility): 'title' and 'desc' elements in SVG 1.2T [SVG Core 2.0] http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/WG/track/issues/2114 Raised by: Doug Schepers On product: SVG Core 2.0 Al Gilman <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-wai-pf/2008OctDec/0067.html>: [[ Reference: http://dev.w3.org/SVG/profiles/1.2T/publish/ struct.html#TitleAndDescriptionElements This is the Editor's draft, it has absorbed a number of changes already. ** summary I think there are things we would want to change in the specification provisions for these features in SVG 1.2T. On the other hand, I don't think that this release is the time to make the changes. ** details * defects in the present treatment SVG provides a <title> element and a <desc> (for description) element for documenting documents and document fragments in SVG. SVG 1.2T narrows the content model of these elements to plain text. It describes the <title> text as <quote cite="http://dev.w3.org/SVG/profiles/1.2T/publish/ struct.html#TitleAndDescriptionElements"> The 'title' element must contain a short title for the container or graphics element containing it. This short title must provide information supplementary to the rendering of the element, but will normally not be sufficient to replace it. </quote> It describes the <desc> text as <quote cite="http://dev.w3.org/SVG/profiles/1.2T/publish/ struct.html#TitleAndDescriptionElements"> The 'desc' element contains a longer, more detailed description for the container or graphics element containing it. This description must be usable as replacement content for cases when the user cannot see the rendering of the SVG element for some reason. </quote> This, to me, feels like we have analogous features for html4:element.title and for html4:img.longdesc but nothing that fills the role of html4:img.alt: a terse replacement text. The user needs a terse replacement that identifies what this object or container is so they can decide to move on to the next or learn more about this one. That browse-ability or 'interactive verbosity control' is part of the look-and-feel adaptation capability required. In my ontology of textual information about something, "a short title" and "supplementary to the rendering of the element" are conflicting descriptions. "A short title" should be sufficient to identify the graphic object or container in the absence of that object or collection. In this case, 'supplementary' is misleading. My discussion of how tooltip behavior stole @title away from being a proper title is at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-tech-comments/2001Jul/0001.html Likewise for the longer version, in practice a replacement and a description are not the same thing. So I feel that this discussion sounds more prescriptive, but fails to be a clear and successful set of instructions. * ambiguity in the "right answer" We are still wrestling with HTML WG as regards how to meet the various needs for text information about a graphic object. http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueAltAttribute http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/LongdescRetention I think it's fairly clear we want markup back in these elements. Internationalization and accessibility are not adequately addressed by a <switch> on systemLanguage when what is needed is <ruby> for a Japanese proper name or ssml:say-as information. Allowing markup inside a description would make it easy to mark the content for tapered presentation with a header element that suffices for quick-look and the rest of the <desc> to support those who want to drill down. That said, it's not clear what foreign markup vocabularies the SVG processors should all be required to support. At least there are required-capability metadata features defined already, such as requiredFonts and requiredFormats. The point here is that the author wants to do right and put a foreignObject in to fill the role of the <desc> they have to add ARIA markup with @role='description' and an explicit @describedby on the enclosing element that is being described. But this does not add up to a design. One plan for a consistent schema of media object properties is discussed at http://esw.w3.org/topic/PF/XTech/HTML5/MediaSpecificElements .. but PFWG has not reviewed this or come to a consensus behind it. None of the above constitutes a substitute design; and I doubt we could come up with a substitute design with the required implementation experience to get 1.2T to advance in a timely fashion. ** so what to do? If someone can go over this and propose alternate language for SVG 1.2T that more clearly implements WCAG2 SC 1.1.1, and do it by the comment deadline Monday, that would be great. Especially great if it doesn't have any Implementation Report consequences. Failing that, I think that we should let 1.2T go with a heads-up that this is an area we should revisit on the way to SVG 1.2 Core + modules. ]]
Received on Saturday, 11 October 2008 18:19:31 UTC