RE: [techs] Summary of February 26 2003 teleconference

> But that still leaves some images
> that require a longer description

and those images can freely and happily take longdesc.

> readers speak the contents of ALT or TITLE attributes *automatically*
> (depending on what the individual user chooses for his or her settings).

Fix the screen readers. Don't write WCAG 2.0 to work around the bugs
in (inevitably) Jaws, which to this day cannot handle reasonably
likely combinations of valid HTML, like <img alt="" title=""
longdesc="" /> or-- heaven help us-- the same HTML inside <a
title=""></a>.

> one another, either-- you get one or the other.  Which brings me to the
> longdesc attribute.  The fact that the longdesc points to another file
> gives me an option as a user: I can choose to listen to that description
> or not.

That's a screen-reader issue. It has nothing to do with WCAG 2.0's
preferred authoring practices.

Remember, *the way Jaws screws up Web pages* should not be the basis
for writing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

> That's from the user's point of view-- at least *this* user's point of
> view.

That user's tools are broken. Of course, it's what a lot of people
are stuck with, but whose problem is that?

>  If the developer feels it's essential to present the extended
> description, the easiest way is simply to put it on the screen as text--
> that is, to use the text as part of the page and information design.

No sighted Web designer would do that, nor should they have to.

> I venture to say that in such cases many users who *don't* have
> disabilities will benefit from the presence of the extended description.

Doubtful in the extreme, and more likely to trigger angry
complaints.

> -----Original Message-----

Nice touch.

-- 

  Joe Clark  |  joeclark@joeclark.org
  Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
  <http://joeclark.org/access/> | <http://joeclark.org/book/>

Received on Monday, 3 March 2003 14:54:35 UTC