On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:48:06 +0200, Anne van Kesteren
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 06:36:40 -0700, James Graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
But XBL works with ~0 assistive technologies and is presumably going to
be complex to implement properly. Whilst, in general, I agree that
having elements used in the correct way to provide semantic information
is desirable, I think that adopting a technology that is already
implemented and proven to solve real problems is a better approach than
waiting on a complex future specification to be finished and
implemented.
So a while ago I posted
http://annevankesteren.nl/2006/06/accessibility-ideas some of my
thoughts regarding role=""... Basically, I don't really see authors
taking extra steps to make things accessible. Accessibility should just
be an integral part of the language, otherwise I don't think it will
work. For authors it will seem that without role="" their custom widgets
will work so there's no real benefit in adding it unless you work for
some big company that hires a few "accessibility experts" who tell you
to add it.
This was the argument used throughout the 90s against the alt attribute.
(There are better arguments, like "even if you do use it the design is
crap" but they weren't really the major issue then). It turns out that bit
by bit people learn to get it. Alt attributes are used a lot more than
they were, and better. (Yes, this means that they are now used
infrequently and badly. But that's a big practical improvement).
Making accessibility part of the language is a good idea. But it is no
better in practice than role, since people don't use the semantics
consistently and make a big effort to innovate using JS and so on. The
role attribute won't be perfect but it gives people a relatively reliable
way to add something that won't impact on the rest of what they do (when
alt got overloaded for tooltip this became a problem). There are also ways
to add it post-hoc, e.g. by browserJS or something similar.
cheers
Chaals
--
Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
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