Add warning to technique H45 that longdesc is obsolete

[joppekroon]

MDN warns that the longDesc attribute is obsolete.

Assuming, MDN is correct, I think it would be appropriate to warn would be implementers that Technique H45: using longdesc is deprecated.

[lauracarlson]

Hi @joppekroon

The longdesc attribute is not obsolete. HTML5 The Image Description Extension (longdesc) is a W3C Recommendation:
https://www.w3.org/TR/html-longdesc/

[mraccess77]

I've seen decreased support for longdesc with screen readers in my experience. Also longdesc is not part of the whatwg spec.

[patrickhlauke]

[insert monty python dead parrot sketch reference here]

[joppekroon]

Oh boy. I did not realize the history of 'longdesc' when I opened this issue 😆.

Hmm, I guess it's still valuable to add a comment to the technique regarding it's status. To prevent future a11y newbies like me to be confused about the validity of the technique?!

[lauracarlson]

At one time we had a User Agent and Assistive Technology Support Notes section for a number of 2.0 techniques.

They were linked from the corresponding technique pages such as:

• H45
• H48
• H49
• G53
• H57

Although 2.1 does refer to " User Agent and Assistive Technology Support Notes" in its Understanding Doc, those notes currently don't seem to exist for 2.1. Maybe @alastc or @awkawk may know what happened to them.

[alastc]

Hi @lauracarlson, those support notes are still there if you click through (e.g. H45), but they are not maintained.

I have a vague memory of a discussion that they were hard to maintain and it would be better to keep the techniques themselves up to date, but that is also an overhead!

In this case, assuming we don't have consensus to drop the longdesc technique, perhaps a note recommending G73?

[awkawk]

Not regularly maintained. They are maintained as much as the H45 technique is...

[alastc]

Sorry, I guess the last time was before I was co-chair? I should have said: not been updated recently...

[JAWS-test]

Old test results for longdesc:

• http://w3c.github.io/test-results/html-longdesc/cr-report.html
• https://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/longdesctestcases.htm

New test results (current browser versions, NVDA 2019.2, JAWS 2019)

Chrome

• No hint for sighted users
• NVDA: No hint
• JAWS: Hint if graphic is not inside a link. Long description cannot be opened (Alt+Enter does not work)

Firefox

• Hint for sighted users in context menu, long description can be opened via context menu
• NVDA: Hint, can be opened with INS+D
• JAWS: no hint, but long description can be opened via context menu

IE

• No hint for sighted users
• NVDA: Hint about long description, which cannot be opened (INS+D does not work)
• JAWS: Hint about long description that can be opened with Alt+Enter

[lauracarlson]

Paging @chaals and @johnfoliot

Hi Chaals and John,

Could you please weigh in on this issue, "Add warning to technique H45 that longdesc is obsolete", if you get a chance. I think it would benefit from your perspective.

Thank you,
Laura

[LJWatson]

As the result of another conversation, I ran some longdesc tests in August with help from @scottaohara.

[kazuhito-kidachi]

H45 technique should be deleted, since W3C HTML standards are superseded by WHATWG HTML standard, and longdesc on img elements is obsolete in the Living Standard. Developers can be confused if the technique keep available online.

[chaals]

I think this depends on testing outcomes, and @LJWatson yours are apparently offline.

Reality - especially as implemented in screen readers - seems more important than a hotly disputed theoretical argument about specification purity.

Support charts are probably important to avoiding confusion.

[patrickhlauke]

but speaking of reality: assuming a developer, today, decided to use longdesc ... they'd see errors when validating their page (not that developers validate their code, but...)

for instance, https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.splintered.co.uk%2Fexperiments%2Farchives%2Ffirefox_longdesc_extension%2F

which may well dissuade them from using it now. so the adoption rate/usage of longdesc (which has already been very low, historically) is unlikely to grow.

so leaving H45 as is, without any aknowledgement that UA/AT support may still be flaky after all these years, and that it's now also obsoleted in current specs, would be a disservice to developers, and a bit dishonest.

[chaals]

There are a set of tests you can play with at https://github.com/chaals/longdesc-tests that cover a pretty large set of possible circumstances.

[kazuhito-kidachi]

Support charts are helpful, but do we recommend to use the technique to developers? I do not recommend personally, since the attribute is obsolete, and thus UA/AT support will not be improved in future, IMHO. Even if we leave the technique, we need to add correct information about current standard and implementation, in terms of reality.

[LJWatson]

The test case is back online.

It could be argued that longdesc has the implementation experience expected of a W3C Recommendation, but I think it would be a case made on the letter of the law not its spirit.

Firefox and IE have a partial implementation, in that they expose longdesc via MSAA but not IA2 or UIA.

Depending on IE for implementation experience is already precarious. Given that it will be retired on 15 June 2022, and the announcement today that it will not be included on Windows 11 at all, this technique is clearly on borrowed time - and by proxy, so is the Image Description extension itself.

NVDA supports 'longdesc in Firefox, and Jaws in IE, meaning that the user is informed about the description and can access it.

Setting aside Jaws' dependency on IE for longdesc support, Jaws use with IE is also diminishing. In 2017, 24.7% of people used Jaws with IE, but in 2019 that number had fallen to 11.5%. If that trend continues, it will be hard to consider Jaws a viable implementation either.

[alastc]

The group agreed to remove H45 yesterday, so closing this issue.