Re: [office] Accessibility SC Proposal for alternative text

[Bruce D'Arcus <bruce.darcus@OpenDocument.us>]

On May 4, 2006, at 12:06 PM, Nathaniel S Borenstein wrote:

> What follows is the latest version of the accessibility subcommittee's 
> proposal for extending alternative text support.  We think this is 
> pretty much our final word on this subject, but will discuss it one 
> final time at our face to face meeting May 20-21.  Meanwhile, however, 
> we wanted the whole TC to see what we're proposing.

I have some questions that come from my interest in metadata, and 
relative ignorance of accessibility.

It strikes me that what you are proposing is in fact a mechanism to add 
metadata to objects, and to use that metadata to make documents more 
accessible ...

> Subsequently, the subteam recommends the use of the svg:title element, 
> from SVG, for alternative text and the svg:desc element, from SVG for 
> the long description.

Let's say that this proposal goes though, and in the end the metadata 
proposal allow use of dc:title and dc:description (already used to 
describe the document as a whole) to describe the same objects within 
the document. Is that a problem? If yes, how do we resolve it?

> 4.0 Establish clear relationship between a drawing objects and its 
> caption by including a new optional draw:describedby attribute to the 
> following drawing objects:

[...]

Again, this is covering the same ground I suspect we'll be covering in 
(more general) metadata.

I guess my questions are two-fold:

First, is this sort of linking the only way to correct the lack of a 
"clear relationship"?

Second, I just want to point out that it is highly likely (I'd say 
pretty much certain) that the metadata proposal will provide some kind 
of generic linking support. Again, how do we address this?

I'd guess my druthers not having looked into this extensively would be 
that there should be a text:caption element that is a descendent of the 
relevant objects, rather than using linking. It's easier to process, 
and won't conflict with what we may do at the metadata SC.

Bruce