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I think we are agreeing, and I don't mean to spin up the same debates. I'm just saying that as it is html presumes that the important content is the text and th

by joshuak 13y ago

I think we are agreeing, and I don't mean to spin up the same debates. I'm just saying that as it is html presumes that the important content is the text and throws everything else over the fence. It implies that you are done with translating for all displays if you just follow proper html best practices, when in fact you should consider targeting your content for specific displays in many cases. I absolutely did not say that a blind person should not have access to the web I said the opposite, a designer should be mindful of their various audiences and design for them purposefully and not expect that a file format can do that for them. I wish there where layout oriented and data oriented table tags, but there isn't so table gets used for both if you want anyone looking at the code to to get what you're doing. I also wish you could designate where the 'content' actually is sometimes its the text sometimes its the imagery sometimes its the layout. Then at least you'd be clear on where manual translation is required.

ricardobeat 13y ago
The problem with that is that 99% of designers (or their boss) would not consider screen reader users as their audience. Designing purposefully for the visually impaired means using semantic markup, ARIA if needed, and being careful to offer annotations where content is mainly visual. Creating a separate experience would mean duplicating your whole site, and nobody would do it because of the cost - or even worse, create a limited, reduced version, like the mobile-specific sites with all their problems we all hate. It's a hard issue, but the goal of assistive technology is to include people with disability, not segregate. If you want to create a specialized version for them, by all means go ahead, but HTML and ARIA were designed with this goal in mind. I don't think there is a better tool for this. > I wish there where layout oriented and data oriented table tags [...] I also wish you could designate where the 'content' actually is That's where `display: table` comes in. New elements in HTML5 allow you to designate content, supporting text, images, navigation areas: main, article, nav, figure, aside, etc. This could already be done with ARIA "role" attributes in HTML4/XHTML.

by joshuak 13y ago

ricardobeat 13y ago

The problem with that is that 99% of designers (or their boss) would not consider screen reader users as their audience. Designing purposefully for the visually impaired means using semantic markup, ARIA if needed, and being careful to offer annotations where content is mainly visual. Creating a separate experience would mean duplicating your whole site, and nobody would do it because of the cost - or even worse, create a limited, reduced version, like the mobile-specific sites with all their problems we all hate. It's a hard issue, but the goal of assistive technology is to include people with disability, not segregate. If you want to create a specialized version for them, by all means go ahead, but HTML and ARIA were designed with this goal in mind. I don't think there is a better tool for this. > I wish there where layout oriented and data oriented table tags [...] I also wish you could designate where the 'content' actually is That's where `display: table` comes in. New elements in HTML5 allow you to designate content, supporting text, images, navigation areas: main, article, nav, figure, aside, etc. This could already be done with ARIA "role" attributes in HTML4/XHTML.