Re: Drop longdesc, get aria-describedat?

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> ARIA will do DescribedAT. When we do we will consider ramifications
> across multiple markup environments, as we have always done, e.g. in a
> separate response to Silvia Pfeiffer I noted that we're considering use
> cases and requirements from Epub. Another example, we're interested in
> ARIA over SVG.
>
>
> So, writing an ARIA-DescribedAT should be considered an option to submit
> to PF. That's certainly acceptable.
>
> However, this wouldn't produce a solution today, or even next month, and
> a11y has been waiting a long time.

This is why I am suggesting a Community Group. A CG has the advantage
of being able to specify technology that is required now and allows
browsers to implement it in a compatible manner as a precursor to the
PF picking it up for the next version of ARIA. There is a clearly
defined path to take a specification from a CG and turn it into/add it
to a W3C recommendation. We could get something now without disrupting
the existing process for the ARIA specification.


> My druthers would be to accept longdesc right away and call it obsolete
> but conforming. That clearly signals that a replacement is expected
> while providing needed functionality right away--the same it has been
> available since html 4. As I said, this is my
> preference.

I agree with this. Doing this and in parallel creating a CG on
aria-describedat that takes on the requirements already collected in
Epub would IMO provide the fastest way forward.

Regards,
Silvia.

Received on Wednesday, 7 March 2012 23:46:44 UTC