[uf-discuss] Appeal for Issues: Empty spans in value-excerption-pattern

[Ben Ward]

Hi Mike,

On 9 Nov 2008, at 09:32, Isofarro wrote:

> Where a value-classed span is used and a human friendly wording is  
> used as inner text, then in case 2.) the machine formatted data is  
> read out, but not the human-readable version, and in case 3.) the  
> machine formatted data is read out before or after the human  
> friendly data.
>
> So the accessibility barriers that are created are:
>
> 1.) machine-formatted data is being read out to screen reader users
> 2.) machine-formatted data is being read out, and its human  
> digestible format isn't.
>
> Both cases result in content that is more difficult to understand,  
> but case 2 is actually worse - it replaces human readable content  
> with machine readable content. Both introduce accessibility  
> barriers, just one does more damage than the other.

So, I believe I'm reading this right that you're describing a value- 
classed + inner text + title situation all on the same element, and  
*not* where you have the value-classed element as an empty sibling of  
the human form (which is what the current proposal specifies)?

> With this in mind, from an accessibility perspective, any  
> microformat pattern which results in machine-formatted or human- 
> unfriendly content in an area that is supposed to be human  
> consumable is going to create one barrier or the other, depending on  
> screen reader configuration. So the logical approach to protecting  
> the accessibility of the page in these cases is not to use any  
> microformat that specifies adding machine data into a human-visible  
> region of the page.


Again for clarity, could you confirm whether the proposed pattern  
falls into your definition of introducing machine-data into a human- 
visible region of the page, given that the empty elements are ignored  
in the page rendering.

e.g, in hAtom:

<span class="updated"><span class="value"  
title="20081116T073000+0800"></span>16th November 2008, 7:30am</span>

Thanks,

Ben