- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:14:58 -0700
- To: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- CC: John Foliot - Stanford Online Accessibility Program <jfoliot@stanford.edu>, 'HTML WG' <public-html@w3.org>, wai-xtech@w3.org, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Henri Sivonen wrote: > Existing as in "existing in a spec" is not good enough. For something > to be considered existing, it needs to be implemented in a way that works. The list of rather arcane proposals claiming to have accessibility implications makes no mention of how many years (decades?) of debate followed by an incredibly steep learning curve are necessary to adopt any new features in something that will be confusingly called "HTML something" yet make the road for those already using the language passable. The presumption is the one heard so often that if only Sir Tim had spent five years (like the Xanadu fantasy) "perfecting" HTML instead of getting it out there and in use within a month or so that there would be a better world. Perhaps HTML 4.02 (or some such) might have a chance but HTML 5 - simply no way. The changes to WCAG 1 to WCAG 2, which aren't all that radical have taken several years (7 I believe) and still not much prospect of this last call being *the* last call for suggested changes! How long do you think the laundry list of new features you cite will take to achieve consensus? As to who decides if something (like longdesc) existing in a spec has been implemented in a "way that works" is simply very unclear since it is clear from this discussion that even though it's not used *much*, it still has defendable functionality. I don't have to recommend skipping the tedium of trying to get agreement on HTML 5, time/acrimony will take good care of that: ain't gonna happen in our lifetime! Love.
Received on Wednesday, 27 June 2007 15:15:49 UTC