Re: ISSUE 30 @longdesc use cases

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 7:00 PM, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote:
> Jonas Sicking
>>
>> I've never used AT tools so I can't answer more specifically than "The
>> same way that the screen reader would jump to a @longdesc page, or
>> jump to the part of the page pointed to by @aria-describedby".
>
> In Screen readers that support @longdesc, the fact that a long description
> is provided is announced to the user, but to access that description, the
> user activates the link [enter] - it's a user-choice switch.
>
> Using the sample code you sent me (and only testing in NVDA, as I am on
> vacation and not in the office) the image is announced as "long
> description here" (which is the text that is associated to the image using
> aria-describedby) - there is no toggling mechanism, the user *must* listen
> to the full text referenced as the 'describedby' text (I cannot speak for
> other Screen Readers at this time, but believe it is the same result).
> Thus if you then placed a 80 word paragraph directly below an image, and
> used the aria-describedby mechanism to point to that paragraph, the screen
> reader would read that paragraph as a directly associated part of the
> image, and then move to the paragraph (which, if we remember, is directly
> *after* the image), and read the paragraph out loud again. Yes, that's
> right, *read it a second time*!

Were you using a browser that supports @hidden? If not, are you sure
you weren't simply read the paragraph after the image and not the
aria-describedby feature at all? If not, that seems like a *serious*
deficiency in the aria-describedby implementation. To the point of
aria-describedby being almost useless.

In any case, with a browser that does support @hidden you should
obviously not be read the paragraph the second time, that is the whole
point of @hidden.

/ Jonas

Received on Tuesday, 24 August 2010 02:53:28 UTC