RE: Return of the londesc conundrum

Hello,

As most people know, Publishing is a major area of the W3C these days with a Publishing Community Group, Working Group, and a Business Group.

The current recommendation is to use "extended descriptions" to differentiate from the obsolete longdesc.

The two approved approaches are to place the extended description below the image inside a "details" element, which can be expanded or collapsed. The default state is collapsed. A short phrase is placed in the summary, which is visible in the collapsed state.

The other option is to put a link to the extended description below the image with a short phrase letting the person know you can follow this link for the extended description. We recommend this be in a HTML file with no other content, and a backlink to the exact location to where the reference is.

We have created a test book at epubtest.org to test support in reading systems. We also report on the results of the testing at epubtest.org. The link to this area to download the EPUB is:
https://epubtest.org/test-books

If you are unfamiliar with EPUB, you can rename the .epub to .zip and extract the files. You will find a folder with the XHTML that you can view in a browser.

This is explained in detail with example techniques in the DAISY best practice Knowledge Base, and the image description page is at:
http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/html/images-desc.html 

Hope this helps, and happy to answer any questions.

Best
George

George Kerscher Ph.D.
-In our Information Age, access to information is a fundamental human right.
Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium
http://www.daisy.org
Senior Advisor, Global Literacy, Benetech
http://www.benetech.org
President, International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) 
http://www.idpf.org
Member of the National Museum and Library Services Board (IMLS)
http://www.imls.gov
Chair Steering Council Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), at W3C
http://www.w3.org/WAI
Phone: +1 406/549-4687
Cell:+1 406/544-2466 
Email: kerscher@montana.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephane Deschamps <w3c@nota-bene.org> 
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2022 12:03 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Return of the londesc conundrum

Hello fellow accessibility people,

I remember the age-long battle to keep longdesc into the spec, and then moving it to its own[1] as the main spec marked it as deprecated. It is now marked as **obsolete and non-conforming** in the HTML5.2 spec[2] so I'm at a loss as to whether one can implement it or not, considering one official recommendation versus the other.

Could anyone clear that up for me please?

Thanks for any input!
Stephane

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/html-longdesc/
[2]
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/obsolete.html#non-conforming-features

Received on Friday, 14 January 2022 08:57:16 UTC