[uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users from the BBC

[Martin McEvoy]

On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 10:26 +0100, Frances Berriman wrote:
> On 21/05/2008, Martin McEvoy <info at weborganics.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Have you tried something like this:
> >
> >  <abbr class="dtstart" title="2008-05-15T19:30:00+01:00">
> >  <span title="Seven Thirty">19:30</span>
> >  </abbr>
> 
> 
> Hi Martin,
> 
> It's not so much about "what to try" as the BBC using the hCalendar on
> a new, very large site and not wanting to use a format that is either
> likely to change (if the abbr pattern is changed/dropped) or causes
> accessibility issues.  They just want to help push through the current
> discussion with some real data.
> 
> Hopefully, this issue can be resolved *very soon* - I'd hate to see
> /programmes have to drop their microformat implementation because of
> one, relatively small, aspect of one format.
> 

Hmm It seems to me that the microformats community seems to find it
difficult to resolve the abbr design issue[1], its been over a year now?

I cant see why we cant accept the hAccessibility[2] solution and be done
with it and just use a <span>, I believe most screen readers are not set
up to read out loud the @title on a span by default.  

<span class="dtstart" title="20070312T1700-06">
 March 12, 2007 at 5 PM, Central Standard Time
</span>

Another resolution I rather liked was to use <dfn>[3] instead as it is
unlikely the @title will ever be read out loud on a dfn tag, dfn is
hardly ever used in the "real-world" but to me is an extremely useful
and "posh" tag, perfect for a microformat.

<dfn class="dtstart" title="20070312T1700-06">
 March 12, 2007 at 5 PM, Central Standard Time
</dfn>

Oh well hopefully the abbr issue can be resolved amicably this time
around as there seems to be a few "usable" resolutions[4], if not, lets
all talk about it again Next Year :)
  

[1]
http://microformats.org/wiki/accessibility-issues#abbr-design-pattern
[2] http://www.webstandards.org/2007/04/27/haccessibility/
[3] http://microformats.org/wiki/dfn-design-pattern
[4]
http://microformats.org/wiki/assistive-technology-abbr-results#Valid_HTML4

Thanks

Martin


> Thanks, though!
>