[html4all] ACTION-24: suggest accessibility improvement for "Big issue" marker [FWD]
Gregory J. Rosmaita
oedipus at hicom.net
Mon Dec 3 10:28:11 PST 2007
aloha, for those of you not subscribed to the issue tracker list, or
who don't track the tracker, here is a forward of my "pending review"
tracking report:
---------- Forwarded Message -----------
From: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <unagi69 at concentric.net>
To: <public-html-wg-issue-tracking at w3.org>, <oedipus at hicom.net>
Sent: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:23:54 -0500 (EST)
Subj: ACTION-24: suggest accessibility improvement for "Big issue" marker
BACKGROUND:
Since the style rules defined for .issue and .big-issue are identical,
no one (sighted or otherwise) can determine from the styling what is
an "issue" and what is a "big issue"
The offer/attempt to add context using CSS-generated text (for example,
using :before and :after to generate content which marks the beginning
of a "big issue" and the end of a "big issue") is appreciated, but
support for CSS-generated text is extremely spotty to non-existent; most
GUI screen readers, which have to scrape the screen (technical term:
create an on-screen model) of the page (in effect, a snapshot of the
page as rendered at a particular time) in order to scrape the generated
content, so as to expose it to a screen reader or refreshable braille
display.
Since AT and UA support for CSS-generated content is poor to spotty,
research is being conducted to ascertain what works with today's
technologies. To this end, i have begun to mount some tests of
generated content to gather hard data on support for generated content
in screen readers - consult:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2007Nov/0062.html
to which the following simple test document is attached:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2007Nov/att-
0062/GeneratedContentAccess.html
the results of tests of this resource with various operating systems,
assistive technologies, and user agents are archived in the following
thread:
http://www.w3.org/mid/[email protected]
CONCLUSIONS:
What would be of great assistance to the overall accessibility of the
HTML5 Editor's Draft would be to use semantic markers in the text of the
HTML5 draft, indicating inserted and deleted text, using <INS> and
<DEL>,
as well as considering encasing asides, ToDo, and other markers which
currently use visual conventions to express their function, in the EM
and/or STRONG elements, so that there are structural markers which are
capable of communicating the state of the text -- rendered visually via
the style sheet -- declaratively. of course, the EM and STRONG elements
(and their sub-classed children) can be styled in whatever manner the
editor desires, as long as that styling is tied firmly to semantic
markers,
such as EM and STRONG and not SPAN) -- EM and STRONG have meaning (for
example, an ISSUE is a string of text that should be denoted by an EM in
the document source and styled however the editor wants, whilst a "big
issue" should be marked using the STRONG element to identify it
declaratively (rather than merely stylistically) as a "Big Issue"
RESOLUTION:
Since the style rules defined for .issue and .big-issue are identical, no
one (sighted or otherwise) can determine from the styling what is an
"issue" and what is a "big issue". The differentiation/identification of
an "Issue: " and a "Big Issue: " should, therefore, appear in the
document
source not as pseudo-text, but as actual text strings: otherwise, how is
one to differentiate between the two?
STYLESHEET ADDITIONS:
.issue, .big-issue { color: #E50000; background: white; border: solid
red; padding: 0.5em; margin: 1em 0; }
.issue-label { font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; }
.big-issue-label { font-weight: bold; }
MARKUP EXAMPLES:
<p id="issue-alt3" class="issue">
<em class="issue-label">Issue:</em> This paragraph illustrates non-
generated labelling text contained within the current style rules for
"issue"
</p>
<p class="big-issue">
<strong class="big-issue-label">Big Issue:</strong> This paragraph
illustrates non-generated labelling text contained within the current
style rules for the class "big-issue"
</p>
Pending Review, this closes ISSUE-24
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/actions/24
note that a new issue ISSUE-26 accessibility/usability of HTML5 and W3C
default stylesheets (http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/25) has
been created to address other accessibility and usability issues with the
stylesheet for HTML5 as well as W3C default stylesheets.
--
"He who lives on Hope, dies farting."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack
--
Gregory J. Rosmaita, unagi69 at concentric.net
Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/
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