- From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
- Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 13:26:40 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Gez Lemon <gez.lemon@gmail.com>, <unagi69@concentric.net>
- Cc: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>, <wai-xtech@w3.org>, <wai-liaison@w3.org>
aloha, gez! thanks for your quick, and as usual, concise and on-the-point response... what bothers me is that amazon thinks it is communicating to screen readers, as is evident from the snippet of document source i cited in my post, which happens to be an instance of using the style attribute to define the same CSS values you defined, and which WCAG2 uses as an example of hiding text... what i'm trying to figure out is: what is amazon's purpose -- clearly from the hidden text, it is to provide a more accessible version for screen readers and mobile devices alike... but the only time this notice is spoken is when a non-CSS capable browser exposes the content without it's inline styling, as would be expected when using a text-based browser such as lynx... so, are they trying to hide the text from the visual canvas and paint it to the aural canvas? (or, as in the case of lynx, having it rendered on a non-CSS capable UA?) this seems clearly to be their intent, judging by the inline styling and the text contained therein... what i want to know is: is this an effective way of presenting such information to the aural canvas? i couldn't find any display:none rules that would apply to the DIV styling cited in my original post about the use of overflow:hidden on amazon... are they making a good-faith effort that fails because assistive technologies will not render anything marked as :hidden or are they misimplementing the technique, assuming that screen readers will speak the text marked as overflow:hidden? (i'm talking from a strictly technical point of view, as i abhore the cyberghettoization of content -- especially the words quote similar content unquote) what i am ultimately attempting to determine is, what is the proper way to use CSS to paint to the aural canvas while leaving the visual canvas unmodified? given the state of the CSS 2.1 draft and its ambiguities, i sincerely think this needs to be sorted out, one way or the other, which is why i proposed a quote render unquote meta media property, which unambiguously signals to all canvases that what is marked hidden is to be hidden from all possible canvases, and what is marked exposed is exposed to all possible canvases... this would allow display:none to be a visual property, affecting only the visual canvas, leaving the text so styled available to the aural and or tactile canvases, while visibility:hidden (a modality-dependent property) would be to the visual canvas what volume:silent is to the aural canvas (leave a silent gap corresponding to the hidden block, just as visibility:hidden; hides content, but leaves an empty, canvas- consuming block. likewise, speak:none; is the aural equivalent of display:none, in that it does not interupt the aural flow to indicate invisible text, as does volume:silent so i'm trying to figure out a way of assisting amazon in conveying content to the aural, tactile and the CSS-incapable canvas without intruding or leaving a footprint on the visual canvas... i understand that the collapse property allows the content so styled to be invisible, hence hidden, from the visual canvas, but does a property named visibility really apply to the aural and tactile canvases, especially when the analogy -- or rather, synonymetry -- between visibility:hidden and volume:silent is so explicitly apparent? <q cite="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/aural.html#speaking-props"> Note the difference between an element whose 'volume' property has a value of 'silent' and an element whose 'speak' property has the value 'none'. The former takes up the same time as if it had been spoken, including any pause before and after the element, but no sound is generated. The latter requires no time and is not rendered (though its descendants may be). </q> <q cite="http:///www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/visufx.html#visibility"> The 'visibility' property specifies whether the boxes generated by an element are rendered. Invisible boxes still affect layout (set the 'display' property to 'none' to suppress box generation altogether). </q> gregory. -- "He who lives on Hope, dies farting." -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack -- Gregory J. Rosmaita, unagi69@concentric.net Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/
Received on Tuesday, 22 May 2007 17:26:50 UTC