Re: Unresolved Issues

Title should be used to give what Marja calls a brief characterisation and
Nir calls supplementary information, in a natural language form. This might
be one part of the equivalence puzzle, but it is not a detailed decription of
the object, nor a functional replacement, although it might in some cases be
reusable as a functional replacement.

Marja is right - there are a number of pieces in the equivalence puzzle. One
of the challenges we have faced (and I think WCAG has resolved it as well as
possible given the pieces currently existing) is how those pieces relate to
each other.

Charles McCN

On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Marja-Riitta Koivunen wrote:

  Some comments
  >  >
  >  >Issue 12 - Is "title" a disability access feature? Could title be used
  as a 
  >  >text equivalent? (My notes suggest that I saw it being used as such but I 
  >  >don't recall what it may have been.)
  >ND  
  >  The general answer is that title is not for equivalents. It is for giving
  >  suplementary information.  One exception would be <frame> where title may
  >  serve as "a link 
  >  description" to the function of the frame. This is shortcoming of HTML, or
  >  more 
  >  precisely of the way frames were imposed on HTML by Netscape.
  >  
  >  The title of <link> also serves as a link description but it suplements 
  >  the rev and rel attributes (although these are optional).
  
  MK: In SMIL title is strongly recommended for every element, so it would be
  too bad it that could not be used to give brief characterization of the
  element (I thought that is the function of title anyway?). Some elements in
  SMIL don't have any other information available e.g. A and ANCHOR elements
  (even the link text in A is outside the SMIL doc, there is only a URI to a
  file containing the text).
  
  I think we just have different levels of equivalency starting from title,
  which is not always very clear, alt that tries to express function more
  verbosely, and longdesc that tries to give the most complete equivalent
  description.
  
  >CMN
  >I think Nir has answered these pretty well.
  >  
  >  Regards,
  >  Nir.
  >  
  

--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 Wednesday, 15 September 1999 14:55:12 UTC