On 16 Dec 2007, at 20:09, Manu Sporny wrote:
> It is important for us to focus on the reason this
discussion
> started in
> the first place:
>
> http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats
-discuss/2007-
> December/011035.html
>
> The issue was accessibility, specifically, how
accessible is the ABBR
> design pattern for those that use screen readers.
No, Manu, that was not the reason this most recent
discussion started.
In fact, the catalyst for this most recent iteration
concerns not
accessibility — I deliberately avoided that as finding
precise data
is too difficult. The issue at hand is that more recent
specifications such as GEO (albeit brainstorming) and hAudio
are
mandating the use of the ABBR pattern in a way which is not
compatible with the HTML specification.
Yes, there are many here who care a great deal about the
implications
of microformats on users of assistive technology, but it is
clear
that most contributions here are unable to find sources or
recorded
evidence to support or refute any claim. Unfortunately,
gaining such
evidence from people who really use AT daily is neither easy
nor
inexpensive. You or I downloading a trial of JAWS and
running it will
not useful test results.
> This is not true. You can set several, of not all,
screen readers
> to not
> read titles of SPAN elements.
The issue is not whether you _can_ set a screen reader to
read or
ignore  title attributes, it is whether users actually do or
not. The
limited experience I have from inside Yahoo!, where I have
been able
to ask some very generous people to assist in accessibility
testing
on another issue, is that people who depend upon AT tools
are far
more inclined to customise their tool to improve their
experience. As
such, there are a plethora of combinations of tools and
configurations consuming pages.
One can presume on the basis that these users are more
inclined to
configure their tool, that such a user will configure their
tool
optimally for their usage, depending on the kind of content
they
interact with the most. As such, we cannot ever work on the
basis
that upon discovering machine data in the title
attribute of a
microformat property that they will simply reconfigure their
tool;
their choice to enable reading of titles will be useful for
some
kinds of content.
It is the quantity of variables in the field of AT and the
expense of
testing them which makes it hard for a community of our
limited
resources to make decisions based on AT performance. But
whether
criticising or supporting a pattern, vague statements about
the
behaviour of AT help nobody.
I think this discussion would progress better if people stay
focused
on the data requirement and the semantics of the output
first, and
the implementation second. So far, we're getting very
sidetracked by
a series of new proposed hacks, rather than identification
of which
problems need solving by a precision/expansion pattern.
Thanks,
Ben
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