Re: conflation of issues or convergence of interests?

On Sat, Jul 28, 2007 at 03:08:12PM +1000, Lachlan Hunt wrote:

> I think you're over thinking the solution too much.  Does there really need 
> to be an explicit association between the video and the link to it's 
> textual alternative?  What problem would such an explicit association 
> really solve?

It would allow user agents to download the alternative, or the video itself,
according to a configuration option specified by the user, or by the user's
assistive technology, while presenting only a single link to the user
interface.

It would allow testing tools to check that there is an alternative associated
with the video. This is important for the purpose of verifying conformance to
site-wide or organizational policies, WCAG specifications, etc.

The explicit association would also open up the possibility of special
treatment, in the user interface, of links to alternative content, such as
aural highlighting or access keys provided by the user agent, without
leaving these to be implemented by the content author as an implicit
association would do.
>
> Look at any video on YouTube, for example.  There is no explicit 
> association in the markup between the video and its metadata, such as the 
> user who uploaded it, the description, tags, number of times it has been 
> viewed or favourited, etc.  Yet the user is still able to determine that 
> they are related to the video.

What the user can determine isn't the point. The point, rather, is to extend
what the user agent/assistive technology can determine.
>
> I think an implicit association that the user can determine based on the 
> context is sufficient.  I didn't explicitly define "alongside" because it's 
> not necessary.  The exact markup used would have to be determined on a case 
> by case basis.  But, I guess, an appropriate definition for "alongside" 
> would be something like: somewhere on the page where the user can clearly 
> identify the purpose of the link and its relation to the video based on its 
> context.

This is inadequate for the reasons outlined above.

Received on Saturday, 28 July 2007 06:02:15 UTC