WCAG considering amending F65 to NOT fail missing ALT text if title or aria-label is present

Adrian Roselli writes:
> (being brief at the top to not drag this off topic, but I want to honor Janina with a response; my @alt feedback below)
> 

Thank you, Adrian. I appreciate having your points on list here, where
the decision about what to do with F65 will actually be made.

At this time I want to address only one point which I think commonly
made, but which I believe is factually in error and also exhibits an
assumption we would best avoid. I focus on it below as no one else has
yet raised the concern here.

> 
> As for my opinion, it is my understanding that ARIA was intended to cover the gaps where HTML didn't already have elements or features to enable accessibility. Moving to supplant an accessibility feature that is widely understood and broadly supported with one that most web developers don't understand seems like a step backward, especially when that specification should fall away in time.
> 

This may have been true once, but it has not been true of ARIA for some
time. Certainly a major impetus for the creation of ARIA was remedial,
particularly with respect to providing an a11y mechanism for
javascripted content. However, no one actively working on ARIA today
would represent this as the consensus view of PF, even those who might
still prefer it were so. One might say that the ARIA developers view of
ARIA's role in a11y has evolved, and the above is no longer factual, if
it ever was. ARIA is not expected to go away, nor is it expected to be
subsumed into a host language.

This takes me to the assumption we should clarify ...

ARIA isn't just about html. Even as we debate what to do with F65, ARIA
is actively being added to SVG2, and the implication of F65 should
probably be considered in that wider context. I submit there's no
reasonable transference of alt to SVG, though there is ARIA application.

The general view among ARIA developers today is that ARIA is an overlay
suitable for application to ml technology in general. So, though it's not
clear to me where next we might apply ARIA once we've "fixed" HTML and
SVG,I do hold some notions of how that might go, and it does correctly
reflect current discussion when we find time to step away from today's
details and into strategic planning for ARIA.Next. 

Most specifically, we expressly regard ARIA 1.1 as aimed at HTML 5.1,
and also at SVG 2.0. We expect ARIA 1.1 to be a quick development cycle,
with ARIA 2.0 as the next major step forward.

Janina



-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Received on Tuesday, 26 November 2013 17:16:04 UTC