Below is a list of sections of the HTML5 spec the Task Force originally identified as having potential interoperability issues. The HTML WG indicated that more evidence would be required before they could consider changing the status of these items from "Interoperable" to "Needs Testing" in their "Overview of testing in view of CR" document. Upon closer consideration, not all of the issues originally reported will be solved by or require testing. Some of the issues (non-normative parts of the spec, for instance) can be fixed through the bug filing process to improve spec text. Please review the summary of findings below and provide feedback. There are a number of sections that will require follow-up work (to file bugs, create tests, document interoperability issues.) Please consider this a call to action for the items listed below. A summary of action items follows this list. If you would like to contribute to any of the action items or disagree with the summary please email mark@w3.org.
We reported that we were dissatified with the deprecation of System Colors (see bug 13639). This does not require testing. If we wish to pursue, we should follow up on this bug.
We reported that we expected Media Queries to be used for accessibility purposes and that since media queries are a feature new to HTML5, we believe they should be tested to verify that they work as expected across different platforms. As far as the HTML5 spec is concerned, there are only 2 paragraphs regarding Media Queries and they reference the CSS Media Queries spec. Unless anyone is aware of any bugs with media queries, I don't think we should pursue this issue.
We reported that the title attribute is not accessible in a device independent manner (you need a mouse to hover over an element to expose the value of the title attribute on most platforms/browsers). The HTML spec acknowledges this in a Note contained at the beginning of the section. However, the spec does not specify that the title attribute should be accessible or exposed in any certain way. Testing is not an appropriate solution to this problem. If we wish to pursue, we should file a bug.
We reported that screen readers can use the lang attribute to perform language switching, allowing speech in the natural language specified. Since this attribute can be used on any element, we asked that this feature be tested to insure its value is available to user agents in all contexts. If we want to pursue this, we need to demonstrate that there are current interoperability issues.
We originally reported that most fallback content can be considered "transparent" as it inherits the context of its parent element. The "re-mapping" of an element's content model must be properly conveyed in the DOM to insure that Assistive Technology (AT) can properly modify the element's behavior and provide the appropriate access to it. Mike Smith says that this is not an issue since its just about conformance (I'm assuming he means authors improperly nesting elements). I do not think we should pursue this issue.
We reported that, based on feedback from SteveF, that there were known interoperability problems with these two sections. For example:
The current state of these sections has already been changed to "Needs testing" by the document's editor (Robin Berjon) based on discussions with the Task Force. However, I think we should demonstrate the above failures with some basic tests/examples.
We reported that we had an issue with the spec text that makes an exception for how <object> elements are to be processed by user agents which do not support images. This would possibly affect the accessibility of imagemaps contained in <object> elements. This issue would not be solved by testing. We should follow up on this bug. Chaals, I believe you took this as an action.
We reported that there was poor support for the techniques described in this section by Assistive Technology. However, the poor support seems to be on the side of the screen readers. If we are dissatisfied with the techniques, we should file a bug to remove the problematic techniques. However, the use of summary/details inside a table caption element is actually quite an elegant solution to describing tables. It would be a shame to remove this from the spec simply because there is currently no screen reader support.
We expressed concern about the removal of the summary attribute and its replacement, the caption element citing possible implementation issues. If we want to pursue this, we need to demonstrate that there are current interoperability issues.
We reported that the button element has existed for quite some time and is widely considered to be interoperable, but there are many new attributes available on this element that may have an impact on accessibility (autofocus, formnovalidate, formtarget, etc.) and have not yet been individually tested. the current state of this section has already been changed to "Needs testing" by the document's editor (Robin Berjon) based on discussions with Mark Sadecki. However, I think we should provide some basic tests/examples.
We reported that links are a critical component of the web and that the ability to navigate to them with the keyboard in all appropriate contexts is critical to users of AT (i.e. when they are used in fallback content) the TF believes that the keyboard accessibility of links be tested, especially when used in the context of fallback content. If we want to pursue this, we need to demonstrate that there are current interoperability issues.
We reported that since HTML5 now supports the the use of of link type on the <a> and <area> elements in addition to the <link> element, testing is required to determine interoperability of this new feature of HTML5. If we want to pursue this, we need to demonstrate that there are current interoperability issues.
We reported that we did not believe the font-size property used in the code example is interoperable. This is supported by the variety of "CSS Reset" methods available to developers, particularly if used in conjunction with a user override of min-font-size. This section of the spec is non-normative. If we believe there is an issue here, we need to file a bug.
$Date: 2013/08/01 20:10:51 $ $Author: msadecki $