Re: Thoughts towards an accessible <canvas>

John Foliot - WATS.ca wrote:
> 
> Recently I’ve come under attack (sometimes viscously and personally)
* for daring to suggest that “fail” when writing HTML5 should have

I think that is par for the course.

> catastrophic consequences. The most recent incident involves my
> exploration of what should constitute appropriate (and now mandatory)
> fallback content for the <canvas> element. Brushing aside the personal
> attacks by small and narrow minds, I’d like to explore and expand upon
> my position a bit further.

I'm afraid I have to agree with a lot of this.  The original philosophy 
behind HTML and any suggestion that authors have a responsibility for 
correctness, are lost causes as far as the people responsible for the 
main stream competitors to IE.
> 
> In other words, the HTML5 authors are attempting to turn a markup
> language into a programming language. This is a fundamental shift, and
> one worth thinking about. They want the ability to leverage the browser

The name of the consortium that created HTML5, WHATWG (spelling?) is an 
abbreviation based on the phrase "web applications", so, yes, they are 
not primarily creating a document language, however commercial use of 
HTML on the public web  has tended this way for a long time, with people 
essentially writing custom browsers in ECMAScript, because they consider 
using standard controls doesn't differentiate them enough.

CSS is going in similar directions, with it becoming more and more 
difficult to argue against new features on the grounds that they 
encourage bad practice, and any suggestion that CSS only hints at 
styling being considered unreasonable.  However, CSS, at least, never 
was about structure.

I wrote a much longer piece on this about a year ago, so won't repeat 
myself here.

Only on WAI list.  I don't like cross-posting, and posting to the HTML5 
lists will be counterproductive.

-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.

Received on Saturday, 21 March 2009 23:34:21 UTC