- From: John Foliot <foliot@wats.ca>
- Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:02:27 -0700
- To: "'Ian Hickson'" <ian@hixie.ch>, "'Shelley Powers'" <shelley.just@gmail.com>
- Cc: "'Sam Ruby'" <rubys@intertwingly.net>, "'Maciej Stachowiak'" <mjs@apple.com>, "'William Loughborough'" <wloughborough@gmail.com>, "'Laura Carlson'" <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, "'HTML WG'" <public-html@w3.org>, "'W3C WAI-XTECH'" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, "'Ian Jacobs'" <ij@w3.org>, "'WHATWG'" <whatwg@lists.whatwg.org>
Ian Hickson wrote: > > Maybe I missed an important e-mail. Could you point me to the e-mail > that > shows the reasoning and data behind the idea that including and > continuing > to encourage authors to use the summary="" attribute would improve > overall > accessibility of the Web beyond the status quo? While we are ferreting out misplaced crucial emails, can we also see where it was 'decided' to make @summary obsolete, and to further counsel content authors *NOT* to use @summary, even though by W3C Charter this counseling is the responsibility of the WAI? (And while you looking, can you also point me to the official consensus note that suggested that deferring a captioning solution with video to 'the next version' was met with approval? http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jun/0667.html | http://john.foliot.ca ) > > The position argued, in detail, with data [1] to support the current > text > in the specification is that encouraging the summary="" attribute to be > used actually harms the overall accessibility of the Web. Can you point to WHAT WG / HTML5's definition of 'harm' and supporting evidence that this harm is being inflicted? > To my > knowledge, > nobody has provided a sound counter-argument to this. > If I have missed > such a counter-argument, please send me a link. Ian, browsers have this wonderful feature called Bookmarks; be sure to save this: http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE I count no less than 27 different bullet points addressing why @summary should be retained as a fully recognized attribute. By contrast, I count but 10 bullet points on why not. This resource also contains a large amount of data including specified use-cases, examples of proper usage in the wild, evidence of implementation in multiple user agents and specified usage by a leading Adaptive Technology. I realize that you have a lot to read in any given day, but this document has been around for quite some time and is relatively stable. This is not new data. If there is still a need for continued debate, then please let's all review the existing data as collected by both proponents and opponents of @summary as provided in the noted wiki. Meanwhile, I respectfully request that you not impose your personal opinion on @summary and restore it to a valid and current HTML attribute - retaining its existing, current status as seen in both HTML4 and XHTML1 (and not, instead, re-invent the wheel: perhaps this faint cow path simply needs more traffic and a coat of blacktop to be back on its way) JF
Received on Monday, 27 July 2009 06:03:22 UTC