Warnings for conforming features in a validator

This is a reply to Steve Faulkner’s message about a warning for the
longdesc attribute in the validator [1]. I apologize for not replying
directly to that message, but I’m not subscribed to public-html-a11y
or wai-xtech at the moment.

If the longdesc attribute becomes conforming in HTML5 again then I
don’t think this generate a warning in the validator. If it is
conforming then we want to encourage people to use it and I think a
warning would do the exact opposite. This is at least the way that
warnings have been used in the validator in the past, discourage use
of deprecated features and encourage people to move on to their
replacements (e.g., move from font elements to CSS).

How to handle incomplete/incorrect user agent implementations of
features was handled as advice in the WCAG [2] (not sure about now
though) and not as warnings in the validator. And because of that
there was a clear separation between features that developers should
move away from and features that currently have implementation issues.

But what are the criteria for getting a warning in the validator in
HTML5? There needs to be some consistency here so that it doesn’t seem
like some features are treated differently than others. If the
longdesc becomes conforming and generates a warning in the validator,
should for example all pages that use the title attribute also get
warnings? That attribute also have implementation issues (in some
cases). Or should everyone that uses the canvas element get a warning,
that element obviously has some big issues related to accessibility
that still needs to be worked out and then have those changes
implemented.

But like I indicated above, in my opinion it is better if these issues
are kept separate from warnings so that developers don’t start to move
away from features that maybe just for a short time have
implementation issues.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2012Mar/0077.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#until-user-agents

Received on Monday, 12 March 2012 16:46:49 UTC