Divya Manian is a bright cookie. When it comes to the web, you can say with complete assurance that she knows her s***. She’s in that category of people that makes me insanely jealous of their creativity and intelligence.

All of which makes me think that somehow she’s trolling us today.

Our Pointless Pursuit of Semantic Value is a shortsighted piece, placing the value of markup solely upon the capabilities of browsers (and other user agents) today at the expense of tomorrow. It’s the sort of article that I would have perhaps expected from the internal website developer of a large corporation at the turn of the century that only permitted its employees to use Internet Explorer 6.

When I started getting paid to make websites instead of pizza, I was bombarded non-stop by the value of making websites that weren’t locked into the limits of the less-capable browsers of the moment (some of which, like the big blue e, were more than a little antiquated), but was instead encouraged to embrace forward-looking mentality of making the best of emerging features where I could and creating a fallback position where necessary. I can’t remember if we called this graceful degradation or progressive enhancement (I’ve heard the two used and misused so much that they blur in my brain), but nowadays we just call this technique “common sense”.

Did I make special span tags on elements that had rounded corners, placing background graphics on four separate corners so that the Great Blue Mentally Misunderstood Beast of the Internet could have pretty edges? Hell, no! I used border-radius and knew that somehow, someday, all browsers would eventually understand it meant I wanted pretty, round corners to nuzzle up against and whisper sweet nothings to at night.

I’m aware that HTML isn’t CSS, and what applies to one doesn’t necessarily apply to the other. But I’m fairly convinced that if anything, the principle applies even more with HTML today than it did with CSS yesterday. Barring a few legacy browsers that need to ride the HTML5 Shiv/Shim Short Bus, using a div or a header isn’t going to have any impact on a browser’s ability to properly render an element. Which means there’s no harm being done by using a semantic element before user agents get around to taking advantage of its extra meaning.

If I had to summarize Divya’s points in her article (I recommend you read it rather than relying on what’s bound to be a dramatic oversimplification on my part), it is that we shouldn’t bother with semantics because:

1. Semantics Are Hard
2. Current Browsers, Search Engines and Assistive Technology Don’t Understand It, So Don’t Bother
3. Spending As Little as 40 Minutes To Learn About HTML5 Markup Is A Waste Of Time

Semantics Are Hard

Divya points out a piece by Mark Pilgrim on the difficulty of semantics. So, Semantics is hard. So what? Last I checked, I was a professional doing a job for a living. It’s my job to know what part of a website is its navigation or is its primary content. HTML5 isn’t really demanding much brainpower from me on deciding what element to use for what job. I’m fairly confident that the general meanings of header, footer, nav, time, audio, video, progress and summary elements are easy enough to grasp as a person who works with websites for a living. Agreed, article and section are a bit confusing, but I don’t think by and large that HTML5 semantics are a byzantine labyrinth of alien thought impressions that cannibalize the minds of sane men.

Current Browsers, Search Engines and Assistive Technology Don’t Understand It, So Don’t Bother

When I was making a few years back, Internet Explorer didn’t understand border-radius. Yet, despite that, I used it in making websites. And not only does IE now understand (and render) those pretty corners, but many of those websites still exist, using the same code I wrote back then. If I had chosen to not use border-radius because of the limitations of the time, the sites wouldn’t look good today because of my short-sightedness.

HTML5 is still settling down into its patterns. Some of the meanings are still being locked in. It’s not “done”, as evidenced by Hixie’s arbitrary and somewhat bizzare attempt to remove the time element from the spec. Does this mean that I shouldn’t be using elements from the specification because it’s not done now? Of course not! The sites I’m making today will not only be live for years, they very likely won’t see a redesign for much of that lifetime. Relying only on what’s “finished” now would be a disservice to my clients today, preventing them from benefiting from features for years because of a technicality on the spec’s status or the full support level of browsers.

AT, browsers, search engines, they will all catch up with taking meaning from semantics at some point in the future. When they do, would you rather that your website was ready for them, or would you like to spend time (and money) re-coding your mess of divs into something slightly more relevant? There is no harm in using divs now (when other, more semantic elements might be better). But there is a very good chance that it will put your site at a disadvantage later, when the technology catches up.

Saying that I shouldn’t use semantic markup because AT, browsers or search engines aren’t consistently taking advantage of it in the present is like saying that I shouldn’t use video or audio elements because some browsers aren’t taking full advantage of them yet. It’s limiting my future benefits by over-adhering to the present. How many of Divya’s CSS tricks shown at her presentations at conferences work on all current browsers? In all likelihood, none of them. Does that mean they don’t have value, and shouldn’t be used?

How is making use of semantic markup any different?

It’s not.

Spending As Little as 40 Minutes To Learn About HTML5 Markup Is A Waste Of Time

I am shocked that she said this. I’d almost characterize it as insulting. We are professionals in a career that demands continuing education.

At the end of the very same post, Divya suggests that developers learn Javascript. Which is good advice. Learn it. Love it. But how can you advocate the value of self-education while simultaneously characterizing spending forty minutes of your time to familarize yourself with the meaning of some of HTML5′s elements as a waste of time?

Sometimes the choices we make in markup don’t result in manna from heaven. Personally, I don’t attempt to adhere to sensible, semantic markup for the sake of SEO (which I consider a bunch of snake oil bulls*** anyhow) or for accessibility purposes. I do it because there’s an inherent value in attempting to do something in a consistent and correct fashion. There is meaning and purpose in constantly attempting to improve one’s level of craftsmanship.

There is nothing pointless in pursuing good standards, including adding semantic value to your website. Even if there was no future benefit to properly, professionally crafted markup (and there will be), there’s an inherent value in taking pride in your work and producing a product that is more elegant than that of your hurried, slapdash competitor.

There is meaning in striving for meaning.

Or as Karl commented in Divya’s post:

inadf, rjfsnsl nx pjd yt zsijwxyfsi jfhm tymjw. ny’x ymj xthnfq htsywfhy ns gjybjjs tzw nijfx. dtz fwj rncnsl uwthjxxnsl fsi rjfsnsl. vznyj xfi.

In the past I’ve made it fairly clear that I disagree with a lot of the decisions that HTML5 editor Ian Hickson has made in the past, such as the movement of the WHATWG version of HTML5 into Last Call (well before the W3C has done so, creating an oddball situation where arguably the spec exists in two different states). I felt that he was making a decision to move the spec forward to meet an arbitrary timetable, and not because it was mature enough to deserve that state.

Now that the WHATWG has gone onto its version-free HTML Utopia, leaving the W3C to make sure there’s a benchmark for browser vendors to compare against with what us mere mortals are still calling HTML5, I had hoped that at the very minimum we could rely on a standard that would properly address all the issues before declaring itself an adult.

I was wrong.

Accessibility is an issue that gets me worked up at times. While observing the various battles in the mailing lists of the W3C, it becomes clear that often those most aware of good practices for accessibility are given the least amount of attention by decision makers. Right now we’re witnessing the W3C’s chairs pushing for HTML5 to move to Last Call while ignoring a massive lump of requested data about an accessibility issue.

AKA: They’re moving the spec forward without addressing existing, outstanding issues.

Today’s comic highlights my opinions on that.

It seems that as a result we’re going to end up with a standard that will only address best practice for accessibility as some sort of later patch. This is a load of crap.

For some reason, several smart people think the longdesc attribute is hard to use. So hard to use that we’d best not even bother keeping it in HTML5 as a means to provide alternate text for images to sight-challenged web users.

I’m going to tell you how to do it in a detailed fashion, and you can decide if it’s hard: 1. Put a longdesc attribute on your image with a value that points to a url of a page with a detailed description of the image. 2. At that destination, write the description.

Pretty hard stuff, right? I don’t know if you can remember all that.

This culminated last August as Issue 30, where the working group chairs decided to leave longdesc out due to a lack of data, and they encouraged people to feel free to get more data and approach them again.

In fact, I quote:

This issue can be reopened if new information come up. Examples of possible relevant new information include: use cases that specifically require longdesc, evidence that correct usage is growing rapidly and that that growth is expected to continue, or widespread interoperable implementation.

Laura Carlson took them at their word, creating a research document with over 150 examples harvested from the “wild” and compiled into several use cases, along with relevant local laws and policies from governmental and corporate entities using the attribute.

Armed with a treasure trove of the requested data, she asked the chairs to re-0pen the issue to consider it before Last Call.

Sam Ruby, W3C HTML5 Co-Chair, says “Thanks for all the data. I know I asked for it. But no. Focus on other important stuff instead. Ha ha.” (That might be a bit flavored of a paraphrasing…)

I couldn’t help but read into that an unspoken “Addressing the needs of blind people should take a back seat to getting the spec out the door.”

Class act, guys.

Recently, these three personages made a Working Group decision about the fate of the longdesc attribute which you can read over here. The summary is this: the longdesc attribute, which is a method of serving detailed alternate text for complex images to visually impaired web users, is now obsolete and not a part of HTML5.

So much for backwards compatibility.

Almost a full year ago I addressed the issue of blind web users, encountering the topic on a personal level when I found that my commentary CAPTCHA at the time was challenging for a reader of mine because he was blind. A reader, at a web comic, who couldn’t even see the comics that my commentary accompany. I made a change to the site, setting up transcripts for every comic starting with that one, which can be accessed via either the longdesc attribute or an aria-describedby attribute, both attached to the comic’s image. I’ve been uneven at times in keeping the transcripts synchronized, but every comic since then has that alternate text so you don’t need operational eyes to be in on the joke.

I’m a bit confused to why it’s an issue for non-experts in the accessibility field to constantly be pushing against the presence of accessibility features that pre-exist HTML5 like longdesc. The most common arguments are that it’s largely unused. I know this is true. But that doesn’t seem like a reason to throw validator warnings for those sites that correctly use it for their users (like myself.)

Here’s the validator results for my comic page in HTML5 mode. Mind you, the page isn’t HTML5 yet (I’m really behind on a site redesign), but the one warning that shouldn’t be present is the last one: “The longdesc attribute on the img element is obsolete. Use a regular a element to link to the description.”

Excuse me?

Since when does a validator need to tell me how to design my site? The premise of a link on an a element is plausible (I’ve heard it a million times by now), but it seems to disregard the consequences for sighted users in some design experiences. In the case of the current comic page, I could wrap the comic in a link to the transcript, I suppose. That won’t work in the future design of the page due to interactions that I’ll be adding, however. Furthermore, for many sites, complicated images often have other functionality attached to a link around the image, like loading a larger version of the image or popping open a lightbox gallery. The only alternative at that point is add a separate link by putting an additional element on the page, aka, modify the design based on validation needs.

The fact is, most sighted users don’t want to click on an image description for alt text, because they can see the image. And non-sighted users have access to the accessibility features like longdesc. If a web developer is going to be providing alternative text for complex imagery to the point that he or she would actually create a description hyperlink, why wouldn’t this same person go an extra three inches and just use the longdesc attribute? The premise that a simple hyperlink is somehow more likely to be used is false: lazy people will be lazy no matter what.

I don’t expect this decision to somehow change. Not because I think it shouldn’t. I think it’s an incredibly stupid choice made to please punditry who largely don’t use any sort of alternate text for their sites whatsoever. I just think the issue’s been fought over for so long that those in the position to have the final say will gladly sit on the wrong decision just to move forward.

As a website owner who does make use of accessibility features for my actual blind users, I’ll take my validation error. The code was valid, it does work, and I don’t see any reason to clutter the visual design to implement a less elegant solution.

Referencing soccer during the World Cup, see? I’m so topical.

There is no soccer occurring in today’s comic, which pokes fun at Ian Hickson, editor-for-life of HTML. It also features Miro Keller, the winner of my AEA: Seattle/Dribbble guest comic contest. There’s a washing machine and unicorn in there too. Thanks Miro, for being so patient about appearing in the comic.

The pink unicorn is an example of an imaginary solution to the issue of empty alt attributes inside image tags, one which is as equally valid as the image analysis heuristics suggested by Mr. Hickson for helping blind people understand images. See Matthew May’s related bug report on this actual situation. I’m sure if the unicorn seems too girly to you, we could use tea leaves and chicken bones.

I’d give Ian points for actually seeming to care about the visually impaired for a change, but an imaginary solution being championed seems like a really poor way to address the challenges they face. I suppose it’s arguably a step-up from claiming that table summary attributes are harmful to sighted users and that authors are incapable of writing descriptions that would be usable.

Yes, he says authors are incapable of writing useful table summaries that are non-harmful to sighted users. But, thankfully, the unicorns… I mean the image analysis heuristics will be safe and far more effective.

Competence regarding accessibility challenges isn’t something Ian needs, however. Arguably, what he really needs is the ability to accept advice on such a topic from people in the know… which ties into the issue I started this whole parade with:

I used to behave the way Ian Hickson does when it comes to dealing with responsibility, power, and making use of those when dealing with other people.

Then I turned ten.

Is that statement too caustic and pointed to belong in a standards debate? My apologies. I was just following Ian’s lead. He accuses Sam Ruby of weak leadership as the HTML chair “you just do what the more vocal members of this group want regardless of the technical arguments,” proceeds to insult either the entire workgroup or Sam again (I’m unsure of the exact recipient of “you” here) “from a technical point of view, your decisions are all arbitrary.” and “The WHATWG draft continues to exist because it’s the only way to have a specification that actually makes sense in the face of the ridiculous decisions you keep making.” and contrasts the two versions of the spec in a fashion that is more than slightly disrespectful to the W3C’s version “Easier to just add the reference in just the W3C version and keep the WHATWG version sane.”

Folks, this is all in a single email.

I’m a web developer who makes a comic poking fun at our industry in my spare time.  Ian Hickson is the sole editor of the HTML5 spec, for both the WHATWG and the W3C. As discussed ad nauseum, he is (as characterized by even those not critical of him) the Leviathan, a sort of dictator/tyrant.

If Ian Hickson wants to snap at me, so be it. I’m poking fun at him with a stick as often as I can. But if as editor he cannot speak respectfully to the chairs of the HTML WG even when they’re attempting to be civil to him, then something is wrong. If he’s openly disrespectful to the very specification that he is responsible for authoring, then we’ve got an even bigger problem.

The fiction that the HTML5 spec isn’t split is just that, a fiction. The people empowered to run this process for us have a responsibility that outweighs the responsibilities of your average web monkey. Some would say this is how specifications were always written. Perhaps so. But this specification is far more public, and far more exposed to the “authors” that need to buy into using HTML5. I know for a fact from personal conversations that many of these authors aren’t buying in explicitly because of behavior like Ian’s creating the real confusion as to which specification matters (W3C vs WHAT WG) and whether the specification will survive this rancorous process.

If the editor of HTML5 can’t even be bothered to be civil about what he’s writing without a knock-down brawl every time there’s something added or subtracted that goes against his opinion, then he needs to stop being the editor. Period.

Do I file a bug for that?

On Monday one Andy Clarke, British rock star of the web design world, posted an open letter to Taylor Swift on his blog. This letter expressed his admiration for her as a musician and a gentle critique of a serious problem with her website: it is almost completely inaccessible to those with visual impairment or the inability to use a mouse. He details it quite thoroughly and politely, aware that as a musician (and not a web designer) she likely had no awareness of the issue or even touched the code of the site. This post provided a great example of the purpose of Blue Beanie Day, pushing web standards awareness to those who need it.

All was well until around comment #9 on Mr. Clarke’s post, by one Max Weir. You should read the linked comment for the full text, but the gist of his missive is summed up by the following line: This site is an interactive flash experience and thats all there is to it, there are designers who think accessibility, web standards etc and those who focus on creating a immersive experiences only.

This comment by a man who’s Twitter bio is “Design is form and function on equal level”, posted on an accessibility blog post on Blue Beanie Day, formed a nexus of baleful energy that summoned from the deep places one of the dreaded behemoths of nautical lore, the Beanicornupus. Identifiable by its massive blue beanie and gossamer spiral horn, this ravenous monster consumes the flesh of designers who think that “cool media experiences” are more important than ensuring a site can be used by impaired visitors and would consider that making a site this way is a valid business choice.

Poor Max didn’t stand a chance, suffering many grievous wounds at the hands of the commentators even after Andy tried to call them off. Like Captain Ahab, Max underestimated the beast. Today’s comic portrays his final moments, swallowed up by the Beanicornupus, calling out his defiance at the very end.

Max’s gruesome fate can provide a cautionary tale for us all. Web standards aren’t some sort of optional flavoring for some websites. They’re needed by every one of them. Those who choose to ignore that will face mockery from their website creator peers, and their clients will lose customers who aren’t able to access their sites. Although we’d like to think that only musicians, big uncaring media conglomerates, and our grandmothers don’t know the gospel truth of web standards, the fact is, as Andy said (when asking his commentators to stand down): It’s sobering that on Blue Beanie Day where we, who pride ourselves on our support for standards and accessibility, pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, must not forget that the job that Jeffrey started with Designing With Web Standards is far from done.

As you’re likely familiar with my opinion on this topic, I think you can predict the results.

On October 27, 2009, Ian “Hixie” Hickson, editor-for-life of HTML5 (yes, my bias is showing) decided that there were
“no outstanding emails or bugs on the spec”, and flipped the switch on the spec declaring it in Last Call. Just in time to meet the October deadline. Hooray!

As it stands, his status flip may be premature. Or, perhaps, his viewpoint of reality. If you look at the W3C’s HTML issue tracker, you can see it’s got a lot left on it. In response to comments about this difference between the W3C and WHATWG on whether HTML5 had actually reached Last Call, Ian commented “…we have different issues lists and different criteria for going to Last Call.”

Looking at what’s left to resolve, it’d seem the difference in criteria is that the W3C would prefer the job was done properly, as opposed to being done quickly.

I’m inclined to agree with Shelley’s thoughts. Maybe Ian is trying to reassert some control. Maybe he just isn’t concerned with issues like providing unsighted web users with the information they need to understand tables on a website. Either way, it creates the appearance of a move meant to serve himself, not others.

That’s not a reassuring quality to see in our leviathan.

Today I finally set up a system for linking a transcript of the comic via an aria-describedby attribute on the comic’s image tag. As I learned, making a transcript is a time-consuming process. So far, only the most recent comic has a transcript, and it took me well over a half hour to do with little outside distraction. I can understand, then, one major barrier to accessibility being more common on the Internet: laziness.

It’s easy enough for me to consider that my comic has a very small cross-section of people that it’s targeting: web designers and developers. Of that demographic, even less have accessibility issues significant enough to prohibit them from enjoying the comic (or in some cases like deafness, the comic doesn’t have any feature that they’d be missing out on without added support). But the fact is, if even one person is interested in my work, and they can’t experience it because of a barrier that I should be trying to help overcome, then I’m doing something wrong.

Over the next few days or weeks (depending on how much free time I have for the project) I’ll continue to make transcripts for the past comics. All future CSSquirrel comics going forward will have a transcript created when it is first made.

If you’re a person who makes use of screen readers, can you take a chance to examine comic #34 (Squirrel in the Dark) and tell me if the feature is working correctly, or if there’s any other work I should make to enhance it? I’d appreciate that very much.

Then, at Web Directions North, I attended Derek Featherstone’s Accessibility Beyond Compliance presentation. By the end of it, I could spot at least a dozen things I was doing wrong, very wrong, with my coding. I figured there was even more that wasn’t correct. Accessibility, which I understand as making the web accessible to people with sensory or cognitive disabilities, was a topic that I’d taken horribly for granted. I assumed if it validated, it’d work out. That was naive, to say the least.

Since then, I’ve been trying to get more familiar with the topic while simultaneously keeping up to date with everything else that makes the web work. Trying best suits what happens. I’ll admit, I’ve been thinking of it as a low priority, which I knew was the wrong attitude. But I’ve made efforts to ensure my JS-powered interactivity makes use of the right tags (buttons instead of spans, for example), although I’m still unsure of how to announce the change of a page (like a AJAX-based popup) to a screen-reader. It was incremental, but I was improving.

With this site, with the comic, I’ve been slower. After all, a comic is at it’s heart a visual medium. Would a blind person want to sit through the annoyance of having the joke described to him, like the co-worker’s bungled re-telling of a standup joke he heard last night?

I started reading a lot about HTML 5, and the arguments that it’s birthing process has spawned. One of the banners that differing “sides” of the involved parties frequently have been waving is accessibility, or the perceived lack thereof, or the problems with different scenarios of implementing it. One of the voices I’d see the most was John Foliot, who’s graced this comic a couple times now. I’ve even been lucky enough to have him provide me with a technique for making an accessible summary of a comic for this site.

I have not yet implemented that technique. How much do I suck? After today’s comic, I will be doing so (exact implementation time this week varies).

What brought this topic back to my mind was a string of comments on last week’s comic, which discussed the “pick an icon” custom CAPTCHA that my comment-system makes use of. If you haven’t posted here before, it provides three images, and asks you to click on one to confirm that you’re not some horrid robot. I had thought about blind users when I made it, and ensured each image had descriptive text that didn’t named the image’s object, but provided enough prose about it to let them know what they were seeing.

In the comment discussion, some problems with how that system was interacted with came up, including challenges for screen-readers that I hadn’t anticipated, and the issue of the cognitively-disabled, which I hadn’t even thought about. One well-meaning commentator, in my defense, said something to the effect of “Well, you can’t always make it work for everyone.”…

I didn’t care for that, even though I know he didn’t mean ill by it. The thing is, I like the web, a lot. It’s a huge part of my job, my hobbies, and my ability to communicate and learn about all sorts of things in the world I can’t afford to go visit in person. How would I interact with it if I was suddenly stricken blind? Would I be satisfied with my experience surfing on a screen-reader, listening to pages as they were written?

Yesterday, I closed my eyes, and tried to just make use of Microsoft’s Narrator program, starting with the task of activating the program from scratch while blind. I was able to get it going, but after about two minutes of trying to do anything with my computer, I shut it off in frustration.

Today’s comic, which technically stars John Foliot, is an exploration of that frustration, and hopefully shaking people out of the passive assumption that it’s OK if their website isn’t working for a small subset of surfers.

It also reflects a challenge for myself. I need to implement a summary system for the comic for blind readers. I need to update the CAPTCHA to better serve blind/low-vision readers and make it easier for the cognitively-challenged to understand while still being confusing to a robot. I probably need to do more than that, but I don’t even know what other challenges the site represents yet.

Check out your site. If you had to listen to it, would it be usable? If not, what are you going to do about it?

This comment by John sent me down several interesting paths of consideration. Firstly, it made me think that Mr. Allsopp might spend more time writing in other people’s blogs than his own, much like Jeff Croft (who I had the fortune to see at Refresh Bellingham last week) appears to spend more time in every other city in America than the one in which he lives.

Secondly, I briefly thought that I’d start spelling “ton” (American spelling) like “tonne” (which appears to be the Australian, and I’ll bet also the UK spelling). I quickly discarded that plan, since it’d just limit my word count in Twitter. Which made me wonder, do Japanese users of Twitter get to use kanji in their tweets? If so, that seems highly unfair. They could fit a War & Peace sized comment in a single tweet that way. (Note to self: learn Japanese.)

Finally I really got to the meat of what he said in that sentence (one of many that expressed his thoughts on the mess topic Bruce had posted about). Why should you or I bother with figuring out how the hell to send an email to the proper mailing lists for the HTML5 WG? Or the WHAT WG? Heck, I’m not even sure which group is more relevant. The former has more technical authority, but the latter is actually making all the calls. RDFa, ARIA, and other fruits of the loins of other W3C chartered working groups are being disregarded by the HTML5 people consistently, or being carefully argued away with a pleading for use cases, a suggestion that their expertise is flawed, or that alternate solutions (read that: the WHAT WG’s solutions) are the better option.

People who’ve spent decades in service to their fields are being shot down by non-experts. Consider the issues with accessibility. Laura Carlson recently sent a proposal (signed by a lot of notables including accessibility guru John Foliot and HTML5 doctor in residence Bruce Lawson) that suggested the audacious idea that there be a formal procedure that describes how HTML5 will seek accessibility guidance from the W3C WAI groups.

HTML5 editor-for-life Ian Hickson evaded the issue by listing all the unanswered questions he has waiting on such topics instead of addressing the proposal. Sam Ruby one-upped Ian by expressing his disappointment that the proposal even existed.

In a situation like this, where motivated, caring experts in their fields are being ignored or deflected when using the official channels, why should your average John Everyweb even consider unraveling the process involved enough to attempt to address concerns, knowing the almost certain result of such efforts?

I can’t think of any motivating reasons.

Today’s comic features John Foliot (representing accessibility efforts) submitting such a suggestion to the HTML5 group(s), with my squirrel alter ego looking on in horror at the results. Consider it a softened metaphor that reflects my own growing dismay at the direction HTML5 seems to be heading when working with others.

The first involves Bruce Lawson and snogging. In relation to point #2, I tweeted this. He responded with this. I find the word snogging hilarious, so it went downhill from there, with mental images of Ian Hickson and John Foliot getting hot and heavy.

In those mental images, Ian is asked to shave.

The second topic, which quite inadvertently spawned the first, involves HTML5, ARIA and the apparent lack of peace between the groups responsible for developing each. In his post Alternate Text in HTML5, Bruce bravely discusses his opinion on the topic despite his stated delicate nature and then suggests a group hug, and perhaps a sing along.

By comment #2, Anne van Kesteren has dropped the thunder and brought back the fighting.

Here’s a recap: Blind people can’t see. Blind web users, as a result, need some aids to make sense of things we’d take for granted, even when screen readers are taken into account. Pictures need some form of alternate text and tables need some sort of summary to help give them the scope of the data that’s about to be read to them (as just two examples.)

The WAI-CG has methods for solving these sorts of problems. These solutions exist in HTML4. However, the WHAT WG, with what I presume is a desire to keep code simple, want to do accessibility their own way. To prove their point, they lean on surveys of existing web content which show little adoption of the accessibility features being debated. They also decline to accept the advice of accessibility experts with real-life experience interacting with disabled users.

For a bunch of smart people, that’s pretty stupid.

Actually, that’s stupid for stupid people, so it’s outright dead-brained for smart people.

Why would surveys of existing content prove the effectiveness of the features when used? All it proves is that accessibility awareness needs to be raised among developers. To figure out whether the proper use of these features improve accessibility for the blind, I’d suggest talking to a blind web user.

As John Foliot points out in his comments in Bruce’s post, by all accounts Ian has not actually received any input from a blind person on the accessibility features he is denying.

I’m not an expert in this field, so I’m not going to propose solutions. I do propose, however, that the WHAT WG listens to the experts instead of continuing to cling to their “not invented here” mentality and looking to their own interests before those of the community that absolutely relies on accessibility to make use of the web.

In other words, stop being jerks.

Here’s a couple of related links to the topic in addition to those shown above that might make a good read: Mechanism to Summarize a Table, maintained by Laura Carlson. HTML5 and WAI-ARIA by Anne van Kesteren (the real good stuff is in the comments). Also, make sure to check out the comments in Bruce’s post. There’s a lot of good material in there to get a feel for positions and justifications.

Edit: Corrected the authorship of the Mechanism to Summarize a Table link, based on John’s correction below. Sorry for that, Laura!