[html4all] Another choice snippet from Ian Hickson, in re MathML

[Robert J Burns]

On Apr 1, 2008, at 9:22 PM, John Foliot wrote:

> Philip TAYLOR wrote:
>>> On the contrary, experience with the Web has shown that including
>>> redundant data (e.g. accessibility metadata, page description
>>> metadata, and so forth) is actively harmful, ...
>>
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>
> Oh please, what is the original source of this quote?  This is just  
> absolute
> rubbish of the Nth degree and he *really* needs to be called out on  
> this.
> Prove this statement Ian, with qualified research and data, just  
> like he
> asks of us.
>
>  * What experience?
>  * Actively harmful to whom? How?

I have to admit that without the parenthetical there's nothing wrong  
with what Ian says (though it's not clear what he's referring to  
then). There certainly is a problem with including redundant data  
(there certainly is a problem with including redundant data).

Where the statement gets ridiculous is in his claim that anything in  
the parenthesis could be considered redundant. Using the table  
element’s summary attribute we've been discussing lately, one may make  
a leap and claim that the summary of the table is redundant in that a  
sighted user (and one also educated in the discipline in which the  
table is constructed) should be able to understand the same summation  
from a careful and perhaps protracted study of the table itself.  
However, to say that a succinct summary is somehow redundant still  
strains credibility. Would Ian suggest that in writing essays and  
academic papers no one every redundant summarize their theses in the  
introduction or the conclusion of the essay (because it is redundant  
to do so)? I wouldn't think so. Likewise table header association  
information is hardly redundant (often the information is conveyed  
visually through CSS styling). And again, the alt attribute on images  
is often very necessary (though one may falsely contort this somehow  
into redundant accessibility metadata because the information conveyed  
in the succicnt alt text may already be conveyed through the image  
itself to a particular audience sharing the authors cultural  
background).

The chairs of the WG should really put a stop to these claims that  
metadata and accessibility values are somehow redundant and harmful.

Take care,
Rob