[whatwg] On accessibility

[Simon Pieters]

Hi,

I've spoken to a person who is blind about HTML5 and accessibility. I 
thought I'd send some of his thoughts to the list.

He is in favor of the new <nav> and <article> elements indicating the 
navigation section of the page and what is the main content:

>yeah that'd be excellent, if screen readers would pick up on this
>somehow. because really my main goal when I get to the front page
>of a web site, if I've not been there before, is to get to the main
>content and see what that site's about, what's on that site, etc.
>My second goal is then to get to the navigation to find a section I'd
>like to navigate to.

He says that HTML5 shouldn't drop the longdesc attribute, because it is 
useful for people using screen readers.

>longdesc is a long description, which is what you're wanting to give.
>alt is alternative text, which is just to give me a basic idea of what's
>there. i don't want to read a big paragraph for an image unless I
>really wan to know what's there.

He also says that he accesskeys shouldn't be dropped.

>I love accesskeys, despite anything bad people have said about them,
>they're great. very convenient. if I notice an accesskey on a site I visit
>often, I make use of it.
>
>I would disagree with [HTML5 dropping accesskeys] more than
>longdesc. accesskeys, are really useful, and again I tend to use them
>whenever I come across them. it's a shortcut to get to where you
>want to go, instead of having to search for it.

Regards,
Simon Pieters