The recent decision to banish the longdesc attribute from HTML spurred me to
write this. The argument that won the day it seems was "there are no good
examples" of longdesc in use.
Similar arguments were made by those who opposed the American with
Disabilities Act: no wheelchair users come into my library so why should I
make it accessible?
Even today authors / developers fail to code forms and data tables as they
should be coded with proper accessibility markup. And there are countless such
forms and tables out there. So why not banish the FORM and TABLE element?
The problem is most developers / authors do not know what AT is, how AT works,
how a blind guy navigates a table, what non-visual access is, what audio user
interface is. So obviously you cannot expect them to write imaginative and
helpful text alternatives. As alt is required for every img and there has been
a lot of guidance on this subject one does come across pages with passable /
good alt values. Unfortunately authors / developers are not aware on the use
of longdesc: when it is needed and how to write one. When told to include the
description for a chart using the longdesc, developers do not create an htm
file but enclose the description within quotes ... like the alt value. Or they
simply duplicate the alt text within an htm file.
Just a few days ago I saw a page on which every image had an alt and a
longdesc ... even image links had a longdesc. It only demonstrates that the
author / developer does not know how to use the attribute and not that the
attribute is flawed.
Sometimes we see tabular content marked up with the PRE element and not the
TABLE element. So should PRE be banned? PRE has its uses and any element when
misused or used incorrectly creates an accessibility problem. Like the HTML 5
list of participants in good standing page! It uses a definition list to list
participants. And a separate DL element for each participant. Maybe DL should
be banned.
On the other hand, I applaud the HTML 5 draft for saying do not use tables for
layout and not to use empty rows / columns within data tables.
So what is needed is more education and outreach on the proper use of
longdesc. So do not banish it.
Sailesh Panchang
Accessibility Services Lead
Centreville VA
