Re: @title's relation to accessibility

At 19:58 +0200 UTC, on 2007-09-06, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

> 2007-09-06 18:00:41 +0200 Sander Tekelenburg <st@isoc.nl>:

[... @alt length]

>> [...] An exactly specced "guaranteed to work up to this
>> threshold", would be useful. (If exactly specced, it would become
>> machine-checkable [...]
>
> And when too long, the author tool proposes to use @longdesc?

Might be useful, yeah. But that's the sort of stuff that probably is more on
topic on <wri-talk@webrepair.org> than here. Also for the group working on
ATAG 2.0.

> This proposal is actually linked to the _visual_ problems with @ALT text.
>Aural UAs should not have that limit.

Seems irrelevant to me. Authors cannot know whether in what way their content
will be consumed. HTML needs to ensure rules that, if authors abide by them,
they can be sure that their content can be accessed by any user.

> And I don't think you link this to @TITLE at all?

Correct. For @title the spec may need to to also define some "guaranteed to
work" length, but @title is advisory info only ( ;)) so it is far less
dramatic when a UA cuts the last part off then in the case of @alt.

> You just want to help users to not write too long @ALT texts.

No, I want authors to be sure that length x will be made available in its
entirety in any UA.

> Hence, I don't know if I support this. An @alt text should be as long as it
>requires.

Indeed. That's why UAs must support that length.

[...]

> Isn't it a good advice that @TITLE in a link can contain the <TITLE> of
>that page it links to

In certain cases that might be a practocal approach, yes. I suspect it very
much depends on the actual case though. Context, etc.

[...]

>> But authors can already use <link rel=alternate> for
>> this. They'd be free to provide both that and individual textual
>>equivalents.
>> Thus allowing the user to pick whatever suits him best.
>
> <link rel=alternate> => a good advice for Flickr.
>
> Flickr must decide how to do it the best way for this usergroup.

Not really. Authors should not authors for specific users (we can't expect
them to understand all the ways users access the Web). But they may offer
extra equivalents, in multiple manners, to allow users to access the content
in the way that works best for them.

[...]

> Btw, your thoughts on how @longdesc can be used in photoalbums, are they
>different from mine?

I don't think I have much thoughts other than what I already said: that I can
imagine that that in the case of photo albums, where 'each photo is the
story', it might make more sense to provide @longdesc than @alt.

[<link rel=alternate href=flickr.com/album/longdesc>]

>> I suppose a UA would be free to implement such a 'data gathering' feature
>> though. No need to have the spec require or disallow it.
>
> I don't follow. I have not proposed any 'data gathering'.

I thought you suggested that UAs make all the @longdescs for each image on a
single page, available all together on a single page? I thought that was your
point about flickr.com? Because that's why I suggested authors could provide
such a thing through <link rel="alternate">.


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

Received on Sunday, 9 September 2007 02:46:24 UTC