Re: Helping Canvas Tag Be Accessible

Actually, we provide the ARIA role="presentation" on a table used for
layout and you are done. It is actually quite trivial. There is no need in
most cases to provide an elaborate style sheet unless there is some reason
the author can't use tables to meet their need.

Note: just be cause you provide the API does not mean that the author needs
to implement them in all cases. Again, all we are doing is providing tools
to the author.

Rich:

Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist


                                                                           
             "Anne van                                                     
             Kesteren"                                                     
             <annevk@opera.com                                          To 
             >                         Richard                             
             Sent by:                  Schwerdtfeger/Austin/IBM@IBMUS      
             public-html-reque                                          cc 
             st@w3.org                 "Steven Faulkner"                   
                                       <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, "HTML   
                                       WG" <public-html@w3.org>, "W3C      
             07/30/2009 10:17          WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>       
             AM                                                    Subject 
                                       Re: Helping Canvas Tag Be           
                                       Accessible                          
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:49:47 +0200, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>
wrote:
> If we cannot ensure authors to do the right thing, how can we ensure
> they'll do the right thing if we add APIs to <canvas> that make it do
> the same as SVG? That argument doesn't really add up.

To expand on this. Tables for layout is a problem. We do not solve this
problem by endorsing using tables for layout and adding elaborative APIs so
you can make pages formatted using tables accessible. It is highly unlikely
"lazy" authors will pick up on that. You solve it by providing a far better
alternative (CSS) that has a ton of advantages over using tables and
provides better accessibility without effort.

Now some people experimented with writing a full-fledged editor with
<canvas>. That does not mean it is the right thing to do. The obvious
solution to that problem is in my opinion not to add difficult APIs to
<canvas> that might make some use of it more accessible. There were
probably reasons why they used <canvas> to solve their problem and when we
understand those reasons we can figure out what a better solution would be.
I think that going at it the other way around will only make things
accessible if the person/company is under pressure of some law (because of
the increase in complexity and cost), which would be a shame.


--
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/