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Re: Longdesc replacement

for

From: Kolitsky, Michael A PHD
Date: Apr 18, 2019 5:51PM

My background and interest is in making 3D prints of complex graphics that can be laid atop an iPad or iPad Pro showing the graphic with audio buttons that match the complex graphics so that by laying the 3D print of a complex graphic on the iPad or iPad surface and then a touch to any graph areas with an iPad or iPad Pro pen now causes audio buttons to give values on the graph, x- y labels and titles. The graphics shown at the site below compare what the graph would look like as a table for a screen reader and also how it could be read in a random way with an iPad or iPad pen. As you can tell, I come from the multimedia side and am not sure if what is shown below helps or hinders the ongoing discussion of "longdesc".


See http://www.nextgenemedia.com/complexImages/assets/fallback/index.html for more detail.


Mike


Michael Kolitsky, Ph.D.
Online Adjunct Professor
Biological Sciences
The University of Texas at El Paso
609-399-2431
www.nextgenemedia.com/kolitskycv.html
From: John Foliot < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2019 11:04 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Longdesc replacement

Hi Khaleel,

So... here's the story, and a proposed path forward.

@longdesc has great utility (and is/was, honestly, a good design and
pattern), however it was never properly implemented or supported by browser
vendors, and as such it was never properly used or deployed by content
creators - a perfect storm of 'yech'.

During the authoring of HTML 5, there were multiple acrimonious
"discussions" which became quite divisive - with, at one point, @longdesc
standing in as proxy for how some of the HTML 5 editors were treating
accessibility issues overall. Standards making at the W3C (as is elsewhere)
can be a messy business, and the fate of @longdesc was such that while it
ultimately was 'accepted' to remain as part of the larger HTML 5 spec,
vendors (and in particular Apple) were very unhappy with that decision,
resulting in a "Formal Objection" being raised at the W3C. In cases like
that, the final arbitrator is actually Tim Berners-Lee, who decided to
let @longdesc remain. Apple in particular however did not like that
response (arrogant folks that they can be sometimes), and so despite the
fact that it *should* be a valid attribute, Apple refuses to support it in
VoiceOver or Safari (which ultimately means it will never work on a Mac /
iOS device).

During those discussion, Apple proposed lots of other "potential" solutions
(none of which, 5 years later, are robustly implemented everywhere, so
thanks for nothing Apple - see: https://cookiecrook.com/longdesc/), with
perhaps the exception of Standard link inside figure caption
<https://cookiecrook.com/longdesc/figure_link/>, which most designers have
rejected as not suitable due to the visual design impact it imposes. One
other potential solution, to use @details, still does not have universal
support (see: https://caniuse.com/#search=details) although that can
probably be corrected using a polyfill (or will change once Edge adopts the
chromium browser engine). The suggested SVG solutions still do not have
robust support (and the state of accessible SVG seems to have stalled).

So... today the only real solution that I can see to provide a longer
description of a complex graphic is to hack around the pattern
that @details was supposed to deliver natively in the browser (until such
time as it does). I'll also note that the "example
<https://cookiecrook.com/longdesc/details/>" provided by James Craig
(@cookiecrook) isn't really providing a longer textual description, but
rather just a slightly more verbose @alt text, and I'll further suggest
that they way he's provided the example would never work for a truly
complex graphic such as this:
https://therenegadepharmacist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/coke1hr3.jpg

Essentially however, I'd propose to create a "drawer" (i.e. an expanding or
contracting div directly below the image) that would load by default
collapsed, and in that div provide the longer textual description. The down
side of this technique however is that it still has a visual imposition on
the display, which some claim is a "benefit" (but don't have to deal with
picky graphic designers who might disagree). I've also seen examples where
verbose longer descriptions have been referenced by aria-describedby, but
the user-experience there for non-sighted users is sub-optimal, because
screen readers 'force' that (longer) description on the user (whereas
the @longdesc attribute suggested that a longer description was available,
but the user had to explicitly request it) - so I'd be careful about using
aria-describedby here.

Other possible solutions is to re-use the javascript solution my buddy Dirk
Ginader wrote for me (
http://blog.ginader.de/dev/jquery/longdesc/examples/webaim/index.php), or
(if you are using WordPress) implement Joe Dolson's accessibility plugin
(see: https://www.joedolson.com/2014/03/update-wp-accessibility-longdesc/),
which riffs off of Dirk's example. Both of those solutions
polyfill @longdesc

Hope this helps.

JF

On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 10:59 AM Khaleel Eksheir < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm writing this email to ask about the use of "longdesc". Based on
> W3Schools <https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_img_longdesc.asp>,
> "longdesc"
> is not supported by HTML 5 and all browsers. I tested "longdesc" using JAWS
> with Chrome, Firefox, and IE 11. It did not work with Chrome and Firefox.
> It worked with IE 11 but was confusing. What would be the replacement? is
> there a solution? Would a link tag <a> work?
>
> Thank you,
> Khaleel
>
>
> Khaleel Eksheir, MSc.ESM | Assistive Technology Specialist
> UNC Charlotte | Fretwell 230Q | Office of Disability Services
> 9201 University City Blvd. | Charlotte, NC 28223
> Phone: (704) 687-0042 | Fax: (704) 687-1395
> <EMAIL REMOVED> | Free/Busy Calendar
> <
> https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=keksheir%40uncc.edu&ctz=America/New_York
> >
> | http://www.ds.uncc.edu
>
>
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--
*?John Foliot* | Principal Accessibility Strategist | W3C AC Representative
Deque Systems - Accessibility for Good
deque.com