Re: Mailing list archives: feeback requested on proposedimprovements (2: view)

MAP is the only way in HTML to easily identify and group a set of related 
links.  You can use TITLE in the MAP element to give the set of links a label.

Why is MAP useful?

Because in the future user agents can have functions to navigate past or to 
navigate directly to links enclosed in a MAP.  This is extremely useful for 
speech and magnified view rendering of HTML where users must actively 
explore the page content.  If there are more than one set of related links 
they can also be enclosed in a MAP and the user can be presented with a 
list of the different groupings of links on a page.  This is an important 
means to improve the structured navigation of a web document for improved 
web accessibility.

I am going to check with the WCAG group on this issue.

I think there needs to be a separation of the typical usage of an HTML 
element and the specification.  MAP is specified to include text elements 
and that should be supported in browsers and authoring tools.

Jon



At 08:19 AM 3/28/2002 -0500, Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
>Dominique Hazaël-Massieux wrote:
>
>>le jeu 28-03-2002 à 10:42, Steven Pemberton a écrit :
>>
>>>>>I don't get the idea of putting the navbar in a <map> (client side image
>>>>>map). What's the point? What do you gain?
>>>>This is for accessibility reason. See:
>>>>http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#group-bypass
>>>Ooh I hadn't spotted this before. This is weird tag abuse. Can anyone
>>>explain to me what the accessibility advantages are of using a client-side
>>>image map not as a client-side image map, but as a container for links?
>>>
>>>Why is it better than using a <p> or a <div>?
>>Good question. Maybe Al will be able to give more input on that.
>>Interestingly, it looks like this usage of <map> is not considered good
>>anymore:
>>http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wai-gl-tech-issues.html#group-bypass
>>"A further conclusion is that we do not want to recommend the MAP element 
>>as a way to group links since it is a non-standard use of the element."
>
>
>That's unfortunate that the WCAG WG concluded that after:
>
>  1) That proposal being integrated into HTML 4.01, and
>  2) A fair amount of time spent in the UAWG trying to meet the need
>    of recognizing MAP as navigation markup.
>
>I have not been party to the discussion in the WCAG WG, but I'm
>a little disappointed to hear that now they're unrecommending what
>is not *yet* standard practice but might have been.
>
>  _ Ian
>
>--
>Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
>Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
MC-574
College of Applied Life Studies
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
WWW: http://www.w3.org/wai/ua

Received on Friday, 29 March 2002 10:19:23 UTC