Alt-text Tags and D-links

  • Thread starter Luigi Donatello Asero
  • Start date
J

Jukka K. Korpela

jake said:
I was reviewing somebody's site on one of the other
groups and noticed that they had the longdesc as a literal.
This just causes a '404' error if anyone tries to follow the link that
gets generated... at least in HPR.

Quite naturally. As an almost purely theoretical point, if one wants to
embed the description into the attribute, it would be formally correct to
do so using a data: URL, e.g.,
longdesc="data:,Hello%20world"
(I wonder whether HPR supports that.)
For an incorrect attribute like longdesc="Hello world", a browser _might_
do some guesswork and decide first that it's incorrect (a URL must not
contain a naked space) and then, as error recovery, present the text to
the user as if it were the content of a document pointed to by the
attribute. But this would be far-fetched and could result in worse than
meaningless data presented to the user.

The longdesc attribute is virtually useless, or a little worse: people
who care about accessibility can spend their time writing such attributes
instead of doing something productive, like including an explicit link to
an explanation when needed.
I wonder where that idea is comes from ?

Originally from just sloppy reading of the spec, I guess. The idea has
survived because most people that put longdesc attributes onto their
pages _never_ see them in action, or see them e.g. in a popup window on
Mozilla when they right-click on the image and select "Properties".
 
L

Lars Kasper

jake said:

Please try to shorten the introductory line to exactly one line with the
name and possibly the e-mail address of the previous poster. The message
ID is superfluous, as any one interested in it can find it in the
References header.

Please also quote only the relevant part of the previous posting you are
commenting, not the complete text.
Scenario.
A page contains a list of events to be held this year (by some kind of
local society -- say, a local history society).
The events are in date order.
I want to have all the events for that year on the page (i.e. I do not
want to delete events now over).

You could mark up past events with DEL to give an indication that they
are no more available but that there was something.
When an assistive technology (AT) user accesses the page, I want them to
hear "Skip to the next active event" -- which is a link to the next
coming event. Logical, I guess.
But I want to keep the link invisible to graphics-active UAs.

Why? As a "normal" user I would be happy to follow a link in the
beginning to get to the most actual content instead of scrolling
possibly dozens of screens.

This is a good example where additional links/code/techniques,
originally meant for disabled audiences, are very helpful for "normal"
visitors as well.
 
J

jake

Jukka K. said:
Quite naturally. As an almost purely theoretical point, if one wants to
embed the description into the attribute, it would be formally correct to
do so using a data: URL, e.g.,
longdesc="data:,Hello%20world"
(I wonder whether HPR supports that.)

Not really. It will generate an 'image description' link, but any
attempt to follow it simply gets an "invalid syntax error" message.

(I believe that HPR is one of the few AT UAs that will do anything with
a 'longdesc' -- at least with a url as the argument.)
For an incorrect attribute like longdesc="Hello world", a browser _might_
do some guesswork and decide first that it's incorrect (a URL must not
contain a naked space) and then, as error recovery, present the text to
the user as if it were the content of a document pointed to by the
attribute. But this would be far-fetched and could result in worse than
meaningless data presented to the user.

The longdesc attribute is virtually useless, or a little worse: people
who care about accessibility can spend their time writing such attributes
instead of doing something productive, like including an explicit link to
an explanation when needed.

....... just another way of doing the same thing (like a d-link), I
guess.
Originally from just sloppy reading of the spec, I guess. The idea has
survived because most people that put longdesc attributes onto their
pages _never_ see them in action, or see them e.g. in a popup window on
Mozilla when they right-click on the image and select "Properties".
It'll be interesting to see whether anyone else thinks that 'longdesc'
is a good idea .........

regards.
 
J

jake

Lars Kasper said:
Please try to shorten the introductory line to exactly one line with the
name and possibly the e-mail address of the previous poster. The message
ID is superfluous, as any one interested in it can find it in the
References header.
Please also quote only the relevant part of the previous posting you are
commenting, not the complete text.

Depends on the context. As you haven't included the posting you are
commenting on I can't really make a judgement ............

I usually [snip] where necessary, but sometimes it's useful to include
prior posts to ensure that the context isn't forgotten.
You could mark up past events with DEL to give an indication that they
are no more available but that there was something.

Why? As a "normal" user I would be happy to follow a link in the
beginning to get to the most actual content instead of scrolling
possibly dozens of screens.

This is a good example where additional links/code/techniques,
originally meant for disabled audiences, are very helpful for "normal"
visitors as well.

I think you misunderstand. Please read back along the thread and see why
this theoretical scenario was posted. It's in response to 'rf' who is
going to use it to suggest an alternative way to provide a 'hidden' link
that doesn't depend on a 1-pixel gif.

i.e. It's really a discussion on the suitably of using a 1-pixel .gif
image as a 'hidden' link -- providing additional information or help
which is available to the AT UA user, but not shown in a standard
graphics browser.

(To 'rf': You've gone very quiet, Richard.)

regards.
 

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