- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 05:23:19 +0100
- To: Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>
- Cc: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown@alum.mit.edu>, "wai-xtech@w3.org" <wai-xtech@w3.org>
Janina Sajka, Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:30:04 -0500: > Leif Halvard Silli writes: >> Janina Sajka, Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:50:43 -0500: >>> It seems to me a lot of complication is being concocted to serve a >>> function far more simply served by longdesc. I still suggest a shave >>> with Occam's Razor. >> >> I am not certain that that is a good point: Even without @hidden, one >> can do the same thing - but with more work for the author. >> > Well, if the image is ever to be reused on some other page, it's much > more work to copy all the text and markup than to simply supply a URI > via an attribute. I agree. @longdesc is more compact, in that sense. However, to use <a href hidden> is also quite compact compared with the alternative of using <a href aria-hidden=true> plus CSS: If the CSS gets out of sync, then the link becomes visible. > And, it then becomes a real nightmare to keep such > text updated correctly. I in principle agree. And I wonder if that point about authoring, has been sufficiently strongly made in the change proposal for @longdesc ... > That's the point of Occam's Razor--the simplest solutions tend to be the > correct ones. I just don't see a justification for the complication--let > alone the question of whether it would actually work as intended (which > I don't believe it would). Then one could counter that the outlook for support of @longdesc in UAs - and even across AT - has for a long time looked gloomy. I gather that you have faith in ARIA as such, but not in this detail. It would be interesting to know why. >> Also, @longdesc only works for <img> - while @aria-describedby and >> @hidden can be used all over. >> > Well, that's a reasonable goal, but it's also very much in the power of > the spec creators to expand where any attrib might be used, e.g. in > Issue-203 we propose it for the media elements. I saw a message from you which linked to a proposal for @transcript attribute - is that what you mean? Or has the 203 proposal n not been written yet? > Bottom line, describedby is the wrong ARIA solution. There will be a > future ARIA equivalent of longdesc--but it won't be describedby. > Meanwhile, attempting to shoehorn all of this into describedby is > putting its legitimate functions at risk, and that just isn't > acceptable. How does the shoehorning analogy fit when it is *ARIA* which says that native semantics *should* be revealed to the user? Also, the future ARIA equivalent of longdesc could very well point to a @hidden section, could it not? Well - of course - that is for ARIA next version to decide. But in theory it could. -- Leif Halvard Silli
Received on Friday, 17 February 2012 04:23:53 UTC