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Change Proposal for not including longdesc="": Difference between revisions
| Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
Several studies (listed in the references) have been performed. They have shown that: | Several studies (listed in the references) have been performed. They have shown that: | ||
* | * The longdesc="" attribute is extremely rarely used (on the order of 0.1% in one study). [http://blog.whatwg.org/the-longdesc-lottery] | ||
* When used, longdesc is extremely rarely used correctly (on the order of 1% in a study that only excluded obvious errors; below the threshold of statistical significance on one that examined each longdesc="" by hand). [http://blog.whatwg.org/the-longdesc-lottery] [http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Longdesc_usage] | * When used, longdesc is extremely rarely used correctly (on the order of 1% in a study that only excluded obvious errors; below the threshold of statistical significance on one that examined each longdesc="" by hand). [http://blog.whatwg.org/the-longdesc-lottery] [http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Longdesc_usage] | ||
* AT users don't know that longdesc="" exists. [http://www.cfit.ie/html5_video/] | * AT users don't know that longdesc="" exists. [http://www.cfit.ie/html5_video/] | ||
Revision as of 01:47, 11 February 2010
Summary
The longdesc="" attribute does not improve accessibility in practice and should not be included in the language.
Rationale
Several studies (listed in the references) have been performed. They have shown that:
- The longdesc="" attribute is extremely rarely used (on the order of 0.1% in one study). [1]
- When used, longdesc is extremely rarely used correctly (on the order of 1% in a study that only excluded obvious errors; below the threshold of statistical significance on one that examined each longdesc="" by hand). [2] [3]
- AT users don't know that longdesc="" exists. [4]
- Most users (more than 90%) don't want the interaction model that longdesc="" implies. [5]
Details
No change to the spec.
Impact
Positive Effects
- Stops authors from spending time trying to use a feature that they don't understand and that users don't want.
- Encourages authors to include suitable information in an alternative form that is more likely to be accurate.
- Results in better overall accessibility on the long term.
Negative Effects
- ?
Conformance Classes Changes
No change to spec.
This would not affect existing ATs and user agents, as they can continue to support longdesc="" if compatibility with some set of documents where it is used correctly is desired. In practice, removing support is likely to either not be noticed (some users don't know the feature exists) or actually improve matters (given how poorly the feature is used in practice on the Web).
ARIA provides a number of alternative mechanisms that are currently not poisoned by existing content and that fit better into the kind of interaction model desired by users (according to the survey cited above). For example, aria-describedby="" allows an image to be related to in-page descriptive content.
Risks
- ?
References
Links included inline.