Re: Drop longdesc, get aria-describedat?

I'm adding George Kerscher to this thread.  George is an e-book
accessibility expert and leads the accessibility work at the IDPF.  He
might have some input on the comments below.  George?

Geoff/NCAM



On 3/9/12 3:07 AM, "Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis" <bhawkeslewis@googlemail.com>
wrote:

>On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
>> By way of example Epub has an elaborated requirement:
>> http://diagramcenter.org/development/epubdescribedat.html
>
>Have any EPUB implementors indicated they will provide UI for this,
>and if so what sort of UI?
>
>I think an HTML spec extension including @longdesc would be
>significantly preferable to minting an "interim" epub:describedat
>attribute.
>
>Extending HTML5 should not be a problem when EPUB is using a profile
>of HTML5 anyway:
>
>    http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-contentdocs.html#sec-xhtml
>
>Classing alternative forms of images, such as tactile images, as
>"descriptions" is very problematic. For example, it complicates
>provision of a UI based on the mere presence of the attribute. The
>already introduced "epub:switch" element or the EPUB media type
>fallback system might be a better approach for alternative forms of
>images:
>
>    
>http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-contentdocs.html#sec-xhtml-content-swi
>tch
>
>    
>http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-publications.html#sec-fallback-process
>ing-flow-manifest
>
>While print fidelity might militate against providing default visual
>encumbrances for descriptions for images, this cannot hold for video
>and audio, so using "a" elements would be preferable to an "interim"
>attribute there.
>
>--
>Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
>

Received on Friday, 9 March 2012 12:09:59 UTC