Re: @title's relation to accessibility

At 16:17 +0100 UTC, on 2007-09-03, Steve Faulkner wrote:

> Something to keep in mind is that due to browsers lack of support for
>@title attribute keyboard accessibility , it is of limited use when it comes
>to providing content to users who cannot use a mouse, but do not use
>assistive tech.

Understood. But is that really something authors should consider? I'm more
inclined to consider such issues (which apply to more than just @title)
browser bugs. If users care, they should bug their favourite browser vendor
about it.

It might be that we should somehow say something about this in the spec; that
"UAs should ensure that all content is accessible to all users", but
obviously that's already too strong to be practical. But I don't think that
*authors* should be encouraged to author for specific browsing situations. If
HTML defines @title for "advisory information", then that's all an author
should need to consider. They should not consider implementation specifics,
be they keyboard access, or tooltips. (AFAIK it would be perfectly legit for
a UA to always present @title. The only reason they currently 'can' not is
that most authors expect it as a tooltip, and inline presentation would mess
up their pixel-precise designs...)


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>

Received on Monday, 3 September 2007 16:03:40 UTC