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Re: HTML 5 (sic) and A11y

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From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Jan 24, 2011 10:06AM

On 24/01/2011 09:36, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
> On 24/01/2011 09:24, Joshue O Connor wrote:
>> Hi y'all,
>>
>> I just saw Ian Hicksons post on the WHATWG Blog where the HTML 5
>> "technology is not versioned and instead we just have a living document
>> that defines the technology as it evolves".

> Though I understand your concern, I think it's not going to be worse
> than the current situation. Look at HTML 4.01 ... stable for absolute
> ages, and there's still AT that doesn't handle some fairly common
> constructs in any sensible way.

Indeed, but that was at a time when HTML was _the_ major technology
(rather like when we only had a handful of TV channels, and now there
are a plethora) sans tons of the non-HTML like APIs like Web Workers
etc. It was simpler then, and as you rightly say large parts of it were
not implemented by AT etc. What I am saying now is the new HTML 5 spec
is *huge* and this new move will make things worse IMO.

> And yes, this simply reflects what's already been happening re
> cherry-picking. The only solution, from my point of view, is that the
> accessibility community must keep up the same pace as those WHATWG
> contributors that suggest/add new features - a change of process from
> the W3C model, for sure.

Yes, I think we overall need a change of approach for sure. However, Its
rather hard to provide suitable metrics for qualitative processes but
that's a discussion for another day.., Yes the WHATWG has a totally
different approach to the W3C, and yes they will say that it's open (to
anyone with an IRC client and tons of spare time, that ain't me).

What is bizarre, is that from an a11y perspective, there are *lots* of
great new things in HTML 5 that will certainly improve a11y if
implemented correctly but semantically we have gone from a famine to a
feast and the spec *must* be stable in order to provide guidance to vendors.

Finally, vendors won't go near the dodgy parts of the spec (issues in
flux) at all, it's just too risky, costly etc. It seem to me that this
is circumventing the spec process in order to ship. There, I said it.

Cheers

Josh

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