Re: WAI_PFWG Approves Longdesc FPWD

On Mon, 04 Mar 2013 21:00:03 +0100, Sailesh Panchang  
<sailesh.panchang@deque.com> wrote:

> As longdesc is meant to be exposed to all users and is meant to
> function like a link, perhaps following points need to be clarified:
>
> i. How should user agents  convey that the image has a longdesc attribute

This is fundamentally an issue of user interface. Some screen readers  
announce there is a description available. My extensions used a button  
whose icon changed (the button also provided a guide to *which* images had  
longdescs, and let you quickly get to them), and then a button that  
appeared when there is a longdesc. Other approaches have added a marker to  
the image itself.

I don't think we have sufficient experience to say that one or other kind  
of user experience is clearly better and should be adopted by everyone.  
But it is clear that no discovery is worse than users being able to  
discover the link. Which is why the spec says user agents should make it  
discoverable.

> ii. Does it appear like a link and is it distinguished from other
> hyperlinks on the page in any way?

That depends on the user agent, as noted above. In practice I haven't seen  
any implementation that does this, and suspect that in general that would  
be a bad idea.

> iii. The image will not be tab-navigable but the 'link' associated
> with the image via longdesc will be tab-navigable and
> keyboard-operable, right?

This is part of being discoverable, and it is part of a user agent being  
useful. If it isn't, the implementation needs fixing, IMHO.

> iv. What happens when tabindex attribute is used on focusable elements
> on the page? Should the image with the longdesc also have a tabindex
> attribute?

If you're using tabindex to create a different order, then yes. Personally  
I think that's a bad idea in most circumstances, but I am sure there are  
cases where it makes sense. I suspect that in some minority of such cases,  
there is no disadvantage in leaving tabindex off a longdesc (e.g. because  
the most natural place for it to be in the tab order is last).

But this is the sort of authoring practice that I expect to be developed  
into best practice recommendations by people like you, rather than things  
the specification should try to rigidly enforce, at least at the current  
stage of maturity...

cheers

Chaals

> Thanks,
> Sailesh Panchang
> Tel 703-225-0380 ext 105
> www.deque.com
>
>  keyboard user may not be


-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Monday, 4 March 2013 23:35:01 UTC