RE: H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art, emoticons, and leetspeak

I agree with questioning whether it is worth calling out Leet.  It may not be our greatest challenge in making accessible content.

Re: the leet, I was wondering about the leet text myself earlier and apparently I’m a total 733t n00b (that’s “Leet Noob” for anyone who hasn’t done the extensive 3 minutes of research I have) and wasn’t aware that the “xorz” suffix is for emphasis.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=xorz&defid=952831


I’d be ok removing the leet example.  What do people think about example 1?  If all we were left with using abbr were actual examples of unambiguously proper usage of the abbr element that wouldn’t be so bad…

AWK

From: Steve Faulkner [mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2015 10:45 AM
To: Michael Gower
Cc: Eric Eggert; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art, emoticons, and leetspeak

Hi all,
checking using a leet speak encoder
http://www.robertecker.com/hp/research/leet-converter.php?lang=en

Austin Rocks = 4u571n r0ck5 (basic leet)
while it is not a bad idea to give examples of how we can provide acess to content for some users, it should be clearly stated that this is only a partial solution and a basic solution that provides equal access should be provided
Example:

4u571n r0ck5 (Austin Rocks)
on use of <abbr>
HTML5 states:
The abbr element represents an abbreviation or acronym, optionally with its expansion.

if the leet speak is not an abbreviation or acronym it shouldn't be used to provide the alternative.
On use of the title attribute: its a notoriously poor UI feature for many reasons:
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2013/01/using-the-html-title-attribute-updated/

has details.
the HTML5 spec provides a warning about title: http://www.w3.org/TR/html/dom.html#the-title-attribute.

A related question is: is it worth calling out leet speak? I had to go and look it up, I can't recall seeing it used, but I do live under a rock.

--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>

On 28 April 2015 at 15:18, Michael Gower <michael.gower@ca.ibm.com<mailto:michael.gower@ca.ibm.com>> wrote:
As a new member of this group, I guess I'll take the opportunity to enter the fray on this.

"”what’s wrong with the abbr example?”
Example three in H86<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H86.html> is <abbr title="Austin Rocks">Au5t1N r0xx0rz</abbr>
The second part of the Leet looks to me like Rocksers -- kind of a mashup of rockers and scissors. I believe the originally point may have been that the English equivalent is not actually "Rocks" (that, or the Leet should be r0(k5 )

At any rate, the discussion has now moved to whether ABBR is suitable to use for surfacing ALT. I agree it is a hack. The Leet is not an abbreviation. By the same token, the second item in example 1 should also be removed: <abbr title="fright">=8-0</abbr>

However, I'm with Eric on two points: 1) the fact screen readers don't implement something by default is not a reason to not implement the technique if it is legitimate; 2) other folks, including those with cognitive disabilities, can derive benefit from forms of alternative information which are not historically available via the user agent alone.

In this situation, the ABBR technique is attractive because it is visually indicated by most user agents (as a minutely dashed underline) and provides an affordance via hover to expose the TITLE information to mouse users. So I think what is called for is for this matter to be flagged to the Cognitive TF so they can deal with the multiple questions involved.

Personally, I think using the TITLE as a reinforcement on most uses of ALT makes a lot of sense. TITLE is valid on virtually all elements, so can be added wherever ALT is used to expose the additional meaning to mouse users. My one caution is that I've found that some screen readers will announce both the ALT and TITLE if the strings are not identical. So that would need to be part of the guidance offered.

That doesn't solve the lack of strong visual affordance for the TITLE or the problem with keyboard users not being able to expose the value. But as Eric states, "While there may be a user group that isn’t helped using a technique, we shouldn’t rule it out for other user groups."

If I've failed to follow any etiquette of the maillist, please feel free to advise me privately.

Michael Gower
Senior Consultant
IBM Accessibility

1803 Douglas Street, Victoria, BC  V8T 5C3
gowerm@ca.ibm.com<mailto:gowerm@ca.ibm.com>
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From:        "Eric Eggert" <ee@w3.org<mailto:ee@w3.org>>
To:        "Andrew Kirkpatrick" <akirkpat@adobe.com<mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com>>
Cc:        "David MacDonald" <david100@sympatico.ca<mailto:david100@sympatico.ca>>, "Steve Faulkner" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com<mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com>>, "w3c-wai-gl@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>>
Date:        04/28/2015 05:52 AM
Subject:        Re: H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art, emoticons, and   leetspeak
________________________________



On 28 Apr 2015, at 14:22, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:

> My question to Steve that he may have missed was ”what’s wrong
> with the abbr example?” but David you seem to be raising an argument
> for not using abbr, which would suggest also removing H28
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20150226/H28).

Just a quick thought mainly for the H28 discussion (I am not an ASCII
art connoisseur and don’t know exactly about leetspeak):

I think this is more a screen reader bug and I would consider adding the
information there is better practice than leaving it out completely,
even if the user needs to activate the feature in assistive
technologies.

Also this has implication for people with cognitive disabilities, for
example, that can’t get to descriptions. While there may be a user
group that isn’t helped using a technique, we shouldn’t rule it out
for other user groups. It might also be provided to screen reader users
by default in the future.

Cheers,
Eric

>
> Any additional information is appreciated!
> Thanks,
> AWK
>
> From: David MacDonald [mailto:david100@sympatico.ca]
> Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 6:29 PM
> To: Steve Faulkner
> Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art,
> emoticons, and leetspeak
>
> Agree that we could drop the abbr. It's kind of a hack, and JAWS has
> abbr support turned off by default, so the abbr may not even speak.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> David MacDonald
>
>
>
> CanAdapt Solutions Inc.
>
> Tel:  613.235.4902<tel:613.235.4902>
>
> LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacdonald100>
>
> www.Can-Adapt.com<http://www.Can-Adapt.com><http://www.Can-Adapt.com<http://www.can-adapt.com/>>
>
>
>
> Adapting the web to all users
>          Including those with disabilities
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> policy<http://www.davidmacd.com/disclaimer.html>
>
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 9:50 AM, Steve Faulkner
> <faulkner.steve@gmail.com<mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com><mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com>> wrote:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H86.html

>
> suggest adding ARIA-fied example (from html5 spec)
>
> <figure role="img" aria-labelledby="fish-caption"
> <pre>
> o           .'`/
>   '      /  (
> O    .-'` ` `'-._      .')
>    _/ (o)        '.  .' /
>    )       )))     ><  <
>    `\  |_\      _.'  '. \
>      '-._  _ .-'       '.)
>  jgs     `\__\
> </pre>
> <figcaption id="fish-caption">
>  <cite>Joan G. Stark, "fish"</cite>.
>  October 1997. ASCII on electrons. 28×8.
> </figcaption>
> </figure>
>
> Also question the use of <abbr> in this technique:
> <abbr title="Austin Rocks">Au5t1N r0xx0rz</abbr>
> --
>
> Regards
>
> SteveF
> HTML 5.1<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>




--

Eric Eggert
Web Accessibility Specialist
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at Wold Wide Web Consortium (W3C)