On 4 Aug 2015, at 13:23, Philippe Wittenbergh <e...@l-c-n.com> wrote:
> Nope, Marco is right (and Jim). If you hide something, hide it for everybody. > Use the whole machinery provided by aria-* attributes to clarify & improve > the experience for AT users. That might require using bits of JS to toggle > attribute values, but AT users will have a much better experience. > > After all, what is “noise” on a page to a visual user (until it is needed), > is equally ( or even more so) “noise” to an AT user. > > And even Jim Thatcher’s examples that could be left visible to AT users only > should, imho, benefit from using aria attributes instead. Bear in mind that > he wrote that comment 4 years ago; support of aria has improved immensely > since then. And —cela va de soi— there are always exceptions that confirm the > rule :-) This is an interesting debate, certainly, and opinion does seem divided with authoritative voices (your own included) on both sides. But nearly every article I read on hiding content focuses on /how to achieve/ it rather than whether content /should/ be hidden for AT users or not. This thread plus one or two articles (eg. Marco's) are all I've been able to find. So opinion, whilst divided, also seems to be thin on the ground, at least in documented form. Aaron's ALA article started to discuss the issue in the comments then dropped it; and there's this article http://www.bitvtest.eu/articles/article/lesen/hidden-content.html which essentially reaches the conclusion "it depends". Any further links on this subject (which I realise is now going slightly OT, though still relevant to the list I think) would be welcome. In the meantime I think I'll need to read up more on how well supported ARIA is in browsers, because nearly every article that I've referenced on this subject has been at least 3 years old, often 5. I would still love to hear more views on this though (not that I'm dismissing Philippe's excellent comments at *all*), because it's been a black hole in my understanding of accessibility for ages now that I seem unable to satisfactorily fill. More voices would either increase the consensus or underline the fact that more clarity is needed. -- Rick Lecoat Designer. Coder. Writer. Curmudgeon. ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
