[uf-discuss] RE: microformats-discuss Digest, Vol 36, Issue 9

[Belov, Charles]

> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 15:58:43 +0800
> From: "Zhang Zhen" <lunaticsunblog at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [uf-discuss] One more shot at accessible hCalendar
> To: "Microformats Discuss" <microformats-discuss at microformats.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<1f10388d0805210058u3c7c319fy4a12f4f408167218 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> The whole abbr design pattern is not a very good idea because 
> both the content of abbr element and the value of title 
> attribute should be human-readable text. The right use of 
> abbr element should be like
> this:
> 
> <abbr title="human-readable date">2008-5-21T09:22+08:00</abbr>

I would hate to inflict an ISO date on my sighted readers either.

 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 09:07:14 +0100
> From: "Ciaran McNulty" <mail at ciaranmcnulty.com>
> Subject: Re: [uf-discuss] One more shot at accessible hCalendar
> To: "Microformats Discuss" <microformats-discuss at microformats.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<cdc278e10805210107y8afb3bfo78b34b92e504684a at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 8:58 AM, Zhang Zhen 
> <lunaticsunblog at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But someone might argue that "2008-5-21T09:22+08:00" wouldn't be a
> > human-readable date. As far as I know, HTML4.01 doesn't offer an
> > attribute for the machine-readable purpose and abbr design pattern
> > seems relatively the best way to do the job, but it's not perfect.
> 
> As another aside, HTML5 has the proposed TIME element for 
> exactly this.
> 
> <time datetime="2008-05-23 17:00:00">Friday 5pm</time>

So the site visitor problem is solved for HTML 5.

We still have the coding issue for manually maintained pages by
non-technical personnel.  And even this techie doesn't have 24-hour time
sufficiently internalized to accurately and consistently translate
12-hour times into 24-hour. 

> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> 
> 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>
> 
> There is more on this here:
> 
> http://alistapart.com/articles/hattrick
> 

Still, any reader that reads the title of an abbr tag will read out the
ISO date.
 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 8
> Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 10:26:42 +0100
> From: "Frances Berriman" <fberriman at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [uf-discuss] Request for help from screen reader users
> 	from the	BBC
> To: info at weborganics.co.uk,	"Microformats Discuss"
> 	<microformats-discuss at microformats.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<e86992a40805220226g206c7d99t52f978d9b563377a at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> On 21/05/2008, Martin McEvoy <info at weborganics.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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.

This would be a killer for us as well.
 
> 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.

Me too.

I'm hoping someone can give feedback on my proposed solution, which is
to hide the ISO date using style="display:none"

<span class="humandtstart">May 12, 2008, 5:30pm<abbr class="dtstart"
title="2008-05-12T17:30:00-0700" style="display:none"></abbr></span>

Again, this is to solve the site visitor problem. The page producer
problem still remains. 



Hope this helps,
Charles Belov
SFMTA Webmaster