WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Microformats (was address tag)

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Feb 20, 2007 4:40AM

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, Alastair Campbell wrote:

> Displaying the title on mouseover is unfortunate,

If it's unfortunate, then you're abusing the attribute. Such behavior was
mentioned (informatively, not normatively, but sure suggestively) as early
as in the HTML 2.0 specification, though at that time as relating to <a>
elements only (since it was the only element for which the attribute was
originally allowed).

> given that the content
> is aimed at being machine-readable.

Everything in HTML is aimed at being machine-readable. If you counted on
something not being presented to the user, then you were betting on the
wrong horse.

> However, to get a working
> implementation within current specs (i.e. not creating new attributes),
> is there another option with the same benefits?

You are not within current specs if you _abuse_ attributes. Creating new
attributes would be risky too, but not wrong the same way.

Option to what? To putting some hidden content onto web pages, to be
consumed by specialized software? Sorry, I don't play that game, and I've
been explaining why that's at least potentially hostile to accessibility.

> I take it there isn't an assistive technology that reads out titles on
> <abbr>s then?

Huh? Non sequitur, and not true. Even if it were not true, using titles
for other than advisory titles would be wrong, since it would work against
the desirable development where the titles are optionally (or by default)
made available to users.

> People who want to keep upto date with events, and not have to type in
> 15 events into their own calendar by hand.

Can't you give the same (or better) service to _all_ users simply using a
subscribable email list with a link to the updated calendar (as a normal,
accessible web page)?

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/