Re: Evaluation results: new tags

My guess is: the rendering is completely within the purview of the
User Agent Guidelines WG. The primary responsibility of the WCAG is to
ensure that the necessary information is added. Explaining how this works
in practise would be a good thing to do in a discursive techniques
document.

Charles McCN

On Mon, 15 Mar 1999, Ian Jacobs wrote:

  See my reply below. Judy, your comments are appreciated.
  
  > >For the Techniques document:
  > >Accesskey, Longdesc, Headers and IDs, etc. were often perceived by
  > >participants to be 'special', which meant that they were less confident in
  > >transferring their existing knowledge while implementing them.  For
  > >example, Participants did not expect ALT to be displayed at the same time
  > >as the image, but they were unsure whether Longdesc would be displayed in
  > >Netscape or IE.
  > >
  > >Related problem:
  > >Some of the new tags are not described in HTML 4.0 reference books, maybe
  > >because they are perceived to be 'only' accessibility tags.
  > >
  > >Potential solution:
  > >* There may therefore be a need for the Guidelines / Techniques to provide
  > >additional support for implementing these tags.
  > >
  > >* Participants said that they would like examples of how tags, especially
  > >new tags, might be rendered in mainstream browsers and how screen readers
  > >may deal with them.  This has been provided for Tables and may also be
  > >useful for others, such as Longdesc and D-link.
  
  The HTML 4.0 intentionally does not discuss how new elements and
  attributes are to be presented. The HTML WG also elected
  to say very little about the semantics of "longdesc" and in 
  particular how the user agent should make the information available
  to the user. The details were postponed, I believe until
  they could be addressed by the WAI. It seems as though the
  time has come and you are requesting further specifications for 
  the attributes and elements particularly relevant to accessibility.
  
  In my opinion, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
  is not the right forum for resolving these problems. Rather,
  it is some combination of WAI Working Groups. Judy,
  should this be taken to the WAI CG?
  
   - Ian
  
  -- 
  Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) 
  Tel/Fax: (212) 684-1814 
  http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Monday, 15 March 1999 18:13:27 UTC