- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>
- Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 15:15:45 +1000 (AEST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
I originally sent this message to the HC list instead of the IG list. This was an error, and I apologize to those who will now be receiving the message for a second time. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 12:27:58 +1000 (AEST) From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU> Subject: Re: DESC and TABLE: descriptions for groups of elements Al's META and LINK enhancements are intended to enable the logical order of a document's contents to be preserved in circumstances in which the successive blocks of text are not contiguous in the HTML file. This should allow the correct reading order to be marked up, even if the author has used tables to control the visual layout of the document. Of course, such abuse of table markup should be discontinued in favour of style sheets, which offer a much better means of specifying visual presentation, and are in complete conformity with the semantics of HTML. Al's linking proposal also enables external resources, including descriptive text, to be associated with tables and other elements of the document. I doubt that the TITLE attribute of the DIV element is likely to be misused. Consequently there is no need for ALT (or a comparable attribute) to be added to DIV, and the same reasoning applies to LONGDESC, given Al's linking proposal as already discussed. I agree with Dave Raggett's observation that screen readers are becoming increasingly anachronistic and should not be considered as the paradigm of accessibility on the basis of which HTML design decisions are to be made. Backward compatibility is no doubt desirable, but not at the expense of an efficient, long-lasting design. The WAI should not introduce features into HTML which are likely soon to be rendered obsolete as screen readers are dispensed with in favour of genuine braille and audio formatting software, which has access to both markup and style sheets. I think that the current proposals achieve an appropriate balance between backward compatibility and future-oriented thinking. LONGDESC is probably the best example of this approach, as is Al's linking proposal to the extent that it is intended to remedy the access problems which result from the abuse of table markup.
Received on Thursday, 23 October 1997 01:16:21 UTC