Re: Preload for <section>

Ian Anderson wrote:
> 
> > How about for instance a screenreader, as sson as the
> > page, or a section of it, is completed, the screenreader
> > would start either reading the page from top, or jump forward
> > or backward to read the changed (fully loaded)
> > section, or the user would not know that a section that
> > was skipped because it was not loaded completely.
> 
> I don't think this would be hard to work around. A screen reader that
> doesn't understand the "preload" on the section would ignore it and read
> the content anyway, wouldn't it? 
Yes it would as per the way (x)HTML is designed.

> And if the screen reader is designed to
> understand preloads, why not have it skip the content and say "Skipping
> content that is still loading...". Then when it hits the end of the
> document, have it move back to the first preload section, inform the
> user that it was waiting for more content and then wait for the content
> to finish downloading. Before it started reading again, it could
> announce that the content was now loaded. Once the first section was
> done it could skip down to the next one and repeat the process.

This could pose problems to the extend an user who doesn't see the
position relative to the rest of the contents. One solotion for such
devices would be either to _always_ ignore the pre-loading attribute,
or to wait while he complete page including all objects is flly loaded
to start reading.

For a page that does not have the pre-load attribute on a section, the
screen reader could start to read as soon as (x)HTML file is downloaded
(images and othetr objects are still loading, or won't be loaded at
all.)
This doesn't pose an problems because only the objects are skipped in.

But when an author uses a <section pre-load> or more preferable
<section style=":partial { content:"loading"; visible:none }">
around the complete page or around pieces of content that contain
more that only an image or other object, the linearity of the page
would be broken up completely, and the user would not know the
relation between the parts of an document. For users that can see
what is happening on the screen (the positiopn of what is read within
the document) it would be clear, for those who can't see it, it won't
be clear.

To prevent this either a screen reader must _always_  be able to tell
the user agent to not honor the pre-loading of sections, this would be
accompliced if it's implemented using CSS. (see the messaqge posted by
Tantek on this subject)

Christian Bottelier

Received on Friday, 27 September 2002 04:11:46 UTC