Re: ISSUE 30 @longdesc use cases

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Aug 2010, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>>
>> Define "presented to user".
>
> Let me try again with different terminology:
>
> When specified on an element, hidden="" indicates that the element is not
> yet, or is no longer, relevant. User agents should not render elements
> that have the hidden attribute specified.
>
>
>> A <style> element inside a @hidden element still affects the
>> presentation of the whole page. SVG patterns, markers and <use> elements
>> that point to elements inside a @hidden element is still rendered right?
>> Form controls are still submitted, and javascript is still run, the
>> effects of this is often visible to the user.
>
> Sure. Those cases would all be abuses of hidden="", but they would indeed
> work as described (with the possible exception of the SVG stuff, I'm not
> sure how they react to display:none, which is what hidden="" maps to).
>
> The point is that hidden="" means the content is irrelevant. The hidden
> attribute must not be used to hide content that could legitimately be
> shown in another presentation.

Agree with you so far.

> Elements that are not hidden should not
> link to or refer to elements that are hidden.

This, however I don't agree with. Why should this not be permitted?
What problem is solved by forbidding this?

> hidden="" is very definitely _not_ a media-specific "hide from the screen
> users but show it to the AT tool users" feature. It's entire purpose is in
> fact to provide a semantic way to hide things from AT users, so that
> people writing dynamic applications can write accessible apps and do not
> have to rely on CSS to get the irrelevant parts of their app hidden.

Note that my example has nothing media-specific in it. AT tool users
also do not see the content when it's read by a screen reader when the
reader is reading the normal flow of the page.

/ Jonas

Received on Monday, 23 August 2010 23:07:54 UTC