[html4all] Article by Catherine: Feedback on accessibility concerns in HTML5

[Joshue O Connor]

Catherine Roy:
> He also felt that it would be far more efficient to more closely associate the description to the image, 
>using an element that would have the description as a child of that element. One user responded to this 
>that while the idea of associating the long description more closely to the image seemed attractive at first, 
>it would mean getting that information every time, which could be a pain for pages visited often, especially 
>if these pages had several images, so he preferred longdesc as this way, he still had a choice to access it or not.

Interesting proposal. Is this along the lines of some possible uses of
the <figure> or <object> elements? A closer association of the image and
its alternate or long description would be a good thing IMO (in fact it
could be that closer bindings with any element/attribute and their
associated content is a good thing, especially if it give various user
agents more control over how that content is rendered, however I am
assuming that closer bindings can lead ultimately to this and I may be
wrong). To get around the users  stated concerns about reading out the
@longdesc contents (however it is bound to the element) by some user
defined preference which could be set in the screen reader preference.

This kind of control of how the screen reader outputs content in HTML
documents is pretty standard and is a case of user defined preference.
Some key could be pressed by the user if they wish the @longdesc content
to be read out (maybe the enter key, rather like it currently is)
however my biggest problem with current implementation of @longdesc is
that a new browser window or tab (IE 7/Firefox) is opened. I would like
to see the contents of @longdesc (or whatever the new implementation is)
rendered behind the scenes by the browser, and buffered within the OSM
or maybe in future iterations of screen readers which not longer use the
OSM could inject the attribute contents into the DOM and they can then
be called by the user when the wish. Basically some way of by-passing
the current, 'load content in new browser window' model, so the user has
to navigate tabs (which is however not as bad as having to manage
multiple browser windows.

Thats my two cents on this one. Any thoughts?

Cheers

Josh