Today’s comic references two very important topics that everyone should know about.

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!