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

In regard to characters used contrary to meaning as well as abbreviations, 
I'm wondering what the discussion has been for numeronyms like "a11y". 
They're another form of character substitution, but they're also a form of 
abbreviation. Are they addressed anywhere?

Michael Gower
Senior Consultant
IBM Accessibility

1803 Douglas Street, Victoria, BC  V8T 5C3
gowerm@ca.ibm.com
voice: (250) 220-1146 * cel: (250) 661-0098 *  fax: (250) 220-8034



From:   Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
To:     Andrew Kirkpatrick <akirkpat@adobe.com>
Cc:     Michael Gower/CanWest/IBM@IBMCA, Eric Eggert <ee@w3.org>, 
"w3c-wai-gl@w3.org" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Date:   04/28/2015 08:25 AM
Subject:        Re: H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art, 
emoticons, and leetspeak



On a somewhat related current webaim thread (where this technique is 
cited)
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=6920


It would be worth considering putting in some advice around use characters 
for decoration or use that is contrary to meaning.

I see this a lot and would be good to have a technique to point to (i feel 
a pull request coming on)

note: html5 has this advice in relation to right angle brackets used as 
breadcrumb markers

The use of the right angle bracket symbol ">" to indicate path direction 
is discouraged as its meaning, in the context used, is not clearly 
conveyed to all users.

 http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/common-idioms.html#rel-up


--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1

On 28 April 2015 at 15:55, Andrew Kirkpatrick <akirkpat@adobe.com> wrote:
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
 
On 28 April 2015 at 15:18, Michael Gower <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 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
voice: (250) 220-1146 * cel: (250) 661-0098 *  fax: (250) 220-8034 



From:        "Eric Eggert" <ee@w3.org> 
To:        "Andrew Kirkpatrick" <akirkpat@adobe.com> 
Cc:        "David MacDonald" <david100@sympatico.ca>, "Steve Faulkner" <
faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, "w3c-wai-gl@w3.org" <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
> 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
>
> LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacdonald100>
>
> www.Can-Adapt.com<http://www.Can-Adapt.com>
>
>
>
> Adapting the web to all users
>          Including those with disabilities
>
> If you are not the intended recipient, please review our privacy 
> 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>> 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)



 

Received on Wednesday, 29 April 2015 13:48:19 UTC