- From: Kasday, Leonard <kasday@att.com>
- Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 17:36:38 -0400
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
I think we may need more recommentations on assigning descriptions to groups of elements. One application is for pictures that are composed of a group of pictures, typically pieced together with a table. Visually it looks like one picture (e.g. a person on a tightrope) but it's implemented as a series of images. The images may not be contiguous in the HTML source, e.g. to place a form in the middle of a picture. Another application of grouping is the logical segmenting of web pages. . Presently, grouping is usually accomplished by tables. For example, the w3 home page the following groups, each within a table cell: w3 logo and news; site highlights, table of contents, sponsors, administrative details (webmaster and legal notices) This organization is obvious to a sighted user, because of the visual design principles implemented by the layout. However, a blind user has no way of immediately knowing this organzation. I think it would be useful, therefore, to assign descriptive labels to each main section. Browsers would give this list of areas, and the user could quickly reach the desired point. How can this be implemented? One possibility is the DIV tag, which defines a group of elements via <DIV> </DIV> It's described at http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40/struct/global.html#adef-id It already contains a "title" attribute that could be used to describe the group. However, there are a number of problems with this solution 1. Designers may want to use the TITLE element for something else for the general population (cf. the tool tips discussion). I think we need an attibute reserved for use by screen readers. 2. A long description LONGDESC would also be useful 3. HTML syntax may limit use of DIV: for example, is it legal to have <DIV> in the middle of a table row and matching </DIV> in the middle of the next table row? 4. The elements of a group may not be contiguous in the file. For example, to put a form in the middle of picture of a sunset, the HTML may have a 3 by 3 table with the form in the middle cell and images in the surrounding cells. So the picture elements could not be grouped via <DIV> </DIV> without including the form. So I propose: 1. ALT text and long description attributes for TABLE, TR, TD 2. AL:T text and long description attribute for DIV 3. A GROUP tag that defines as a group any other elements in the page, which may or may not be contiguous in the file. It would have attributes ALT LONGDESC ELEMENTS ELEMENTS is a list of element ID's. This is to define as groups elements that are not contiguous. Len
Received on Wednesday, 22 October 1997 17:37:07 UTC