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From: Vlad Alexander (XStandard)
Date: Oct 26, 2011 12:27PM

As with any campaign, there is a time for discussion, a cut-off time and a time for everyone to come together to achieve a greater good. In the case of this project, the greater good is to have these bugs fixed to match Firefox implementation (which Steve questions) than not to have them fixed at all.

Over the 5-month period, I have exchanged about a dozen emails with one browser vendor in particular. They used every possible tactic to push back fixing these bugs. Throughout this process, the only leverage we had was that another major browser vendor, Firefox, has a useful implementation. This made these items into "bugs" rather than "feature requests". This is a critical distinction! If Firefox has wrong implementation, then these items are new features to other vendors. If Firefox has correct implementation, then these items are bugs. Bugs can get fixed in a timely manner. New accessibility features are put at the end of the queue and right now, the queue is very long. And time is of the essence. Microsoft for example has a multi-year release cycle. If these bugs are not fixed in IE10, it will be years before they are fixed in IE11 or IE12.

I hope that in light of the above, you can understand why I asked Steve to consider using back channels to get clarification on Firefox implementation of these bugs directly from a former Mozilla developer.

I ask that we in the accessibility community work together for the greater good. Let's applaud Mozilla for having the best implementation for these 3 accessibility bugs, compared to the other browsers. Let's get the other browser vendors on board!

Regards,
-Vlad