- From: Jon Gunderson <jongund@staff.uiuc.edu>
- Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 09:50:52 -0600
- To: w3c-wai-wg@w3.org, uaccess-l@trace.wisc.edu, ebwatch-l@teleport.com
>I have the opposite reaction: I prefer #2 (ALTSRC attrib) over #1 >(D-LINK markup) because is it less invasive for non-disabled persons. I don't think I am arguing against #2. It seems to be a reasonable approach to solving the general way to get alternative descriptions. I have 2 concerns: 1. #1 can be done now and can work with any browser 2. #2 could easily become an invisible accessibility feature if know one knows the information is there, since standard browser rendering would not include the ALTREF information. Most people with disabilities will also only know the ALTREF information is there if their non-disabled peers know it's there, since most don't have access to people with specialized disability access knowledge. Non-disabled peers will probably only know it is there if there is some visual presentation or highly visible information in a help file. But you can also say this of #1, since 99.999% of WWW authors don't even know about it. I think the key issue is how best to coax authors into adding the description information (development tools) and how users will know it's available (browser rendering). >The most important thing IMHO is get the LongDesc link into the HTML >source. Anything that might slow down acceptation of this feature by >Web authors should be avoided and having little D appearing all over >the pages is not going to help us. > >How is it exploited by the client side is less important once the data >is there and the lack of UI consistency can be reduced using Browser >guidelines. In any case I think this is where competition might be >useful and healthy. Since there is no clear benefit to this information for non-disabled persons (except people using low speed modems) I don't think browser developers will devote alot of creative resources to this project. I would argue it would be better to have a consistancy between browsers (guidelines and example) of how to do it. So if a person with a disability upgrades their browser or uses an unfamilar browser they could use their previous experience to access the ALTREF information (if available). Jon Gunderson Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign 1207 S. Oak Street Champaign, IL 61820 Voice: 217-244-5870 Fax: 217-333-0248 E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu WWW: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund http://www.als.uiuc.edu/InfoTechAccess
Received on Friday, 18 July 1997 10:52:42 UTC