Re: Drop longdesc, get aria-describedat?

Leif,

At 01:11 AM 3/8/2012 +0100, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>Silvia Pfeiffer, Thu, 8 Mar 2012 10:45:55 +1100:
> > On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
>
> > This is why I am suggesting a Community Group. A CG
>
> >> 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.
>
>How do we get consensus for 'obsolete but conforming' + a CG for
>describedAT? Can this be expressed as a change proposal? And what if we
>do not get consensus for 'obsolete but conforming', do we then *not*
>create the community group?

I suggest you come to an HTML A11Y meeting for discussion; the next 
one is scheduled for March 15th, due to other accessibility meetings 
and conferences this week; or better yet to the text alternatives 
sub-team meeting (next one should be March 13th and I am happy to put 
this on the agenda) where we had been exploring this specific 
category of issues in more depth. Also, please note that there has 
been heavy discussion around many approaches on this already, and the 
multiple delays by the HTML WG on processing the longdesc change 
proposal may at this point themselves be contributing to the 
confusion regarding alternative solutions on this question. The 
TF-supported change proposal on longdesc is still overdue for a fair 
hearing; getting another change proposal considered ahead of that 
would be bad process.

As for a community group approach, note that that does nothing to 
actually standardize anything, only to explore an issue. Creating a 
community group for aria-describedat outside of the people who've 
been working most directly on developing ARIA, and already thinking 
about aria-describedat in some depth, could slow rather than speed 
things up, or at best not materially change the timeline.

>Meanwhile, another option: What if HTML5 simply was silent on @longdesc
>... I mean: If we want to reuse @longdesc in ARIA - rather than
>creating a new @aria-describedAT, then HTML5 should not say that it is
>obsolete and should as well, not say that it is conforming - until it
>has been defined.

Another option is to add your voice to requesting that the 
TF-supported longdesc proposal actually gets direct consideration and 
fair hearing under the HTML WG decision policy, as is supposedly 
imminent; though previous indications of imminence haven't yet borne 
fruit...........

- Judy

>--
>Leif H Silli

Received on Thursday, 8 March 2012 00:43:41 UTC