Ticket #809 (new defect)
the longdesc attribute doesn't seem to be working
| Reported by: | rascaal | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | trivial | Milestone: | |
| Component: | Core | Version: | 2010.1 |
| Keywords: | Cc: | ||
| Operating system: | Windows XP | Blocked by: | |
| Blocking: |
Description
The reader successfully reads the alt but not the longdesc.
example:
<img alt="The Google Story" longdesc="googlestory.html" src="googlestory.jpg" />
googlestory.html:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-W3CDTD XHTML 1.0 StrictEN"
<html xmlns=" http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>The Google Story</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
</head>
<body>
<p>
The Google Story: An inside look into one of the World's
greatest technology startups.
</p>
</body>
</html>
Change History
comment:2 Changed 21 months ago by johnfoliot
The issue surrounding ongoing retention of the longdesc attribute in HTML5 has produced a significant document at the W3C that outlines reasons, use-cases, etc. It also documents legal and policy requirements of various countries and corporations, as well as provides a long list of examples of usage in the 'wild'.
the URL can be found at: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/LongdescRetention#Longdesc_Examples_in_the_Wild
Some key links from that document:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Apr/1089.html - the majority of accessibility specialists in the W3C Accessibility Task Force urge for the retention of longdesc in HTML5.
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/LongdescRetention#Longdesc_Examples_in_the_Wild - which lists, among examples, the US FDIC, Hawaii's Public School system, Oracle, US National Cancer Institute
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/LongdescRetention#Laws.2C_Policies_and_Standards: Organizations mandated to use Longdesc, including The United Nations, French/Dutch/Quebec? laws, and multiple US State and regional requirements.
Support in tools, AT or otherwise, is an important step in ensuring access: the larger problem today with longdesc is that due to poor browser support, authors did not create longdesc content - lack of content makes AT vendors and browser vendors presume that there is little desire or need. It is the classic chicken and egg story.
I do not feel authorized to change your bug status at this time (I respect that I am a guest), but I urge NVDA to take up this issue and implement support as soon as possible.
Thanks!
comment:3 Changed 21 months ago by jteh
To clarify my position on this: I have no problem with the idea of the longdesc attribute. However, I believe it should be discoverable to *all* users, not just users of assistive technology. This means that the right place to implement this is in the browser (where all users can access it), not in screen readers such as NVDA. Therefore, in my opinion, the Firefox extension cited above is the correct solution. Ideally, it should be integrated into the browser itself.
I do not want our support of this to be construed as support for the argument that this should be implemented in screen readers. If we do implement this, it will only be as a temporary solution because of the lack of support in current accessible browsers.
comment:4 Changed 15 months ago by jteh
See also MozillaBug:1996 and MozillaBug:314697 regarding requests to have this implemented in Firefox for all users. Doesn't look like anything is going to happen there, though. :(
comment:5 Changed 15 months ago by jteh
WebAIM's recent screen reader survey reports that over 60% of respondents find longdesc useful (26.2% find it "very useful" and 34.4% find it "somewhat useful").
It's also worth noting that you can already access longdesc for non-linked, non-clickable images with NVDA in Firefox if you press enter on the image. The presence of longdesc is not reported, however.
NVDA is developed by 
See this page for info about why there are better alternatives to longdesc:
http://webaim.org/techniques/images/longdesc
There is a Firefox extension to make longdesc available to all users via a context menu item:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/273/