hAccessibility - Unhappy First Birthday

It’s one year today since Bruce Lawson and James Craig published “hAccessibility“, about the misuse of the ‘abbr’ element in microformats (an issue I first raised on 20 September 2006 in Accessify Forums).

As recent events show, the microformats cabal still has its collective head up its own^W^W^W in the sand.

Despite suggestions for a workaround, a solution seems no nearer, thanks to their apparent indifference. Shame on them.

This entry was posted on April 27, 2008 at 6:03 pm and is filed under annoyances, microformats, web standards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

James Craig Says:
April 27, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Despite apathy from most and even hostile resistance from some of the Microformats community, we’re still making progress, however slowly. I’d encourage people that want to help to contact either me, Bruce, or Ben Ward.
Toby Inkster Says:
April 28, 2008 at 1:54 pm
One workaround that I’ve found involves the intermingling of the existing lt;abbr> pattern and value excerpting rules. It works along these lines:

<span class="dtstart"> 28 April 2008 <abbr title="20080428" class="value" style="display:none"></abbr> </span>

It seems to work in many existing parsers (not all sadly) and I am yet to notice any apparent accessibility problems.
pigsonthewing Says:
April 28, 2008 at 2:00 pm
@Toby: Try viewing that with CSS disabled. And doesn’t Operator ignore such “hidden” content?
Bruce Lawson’s personal site : hAccessibility, one year on Says:
April 28, 2008 at 8:08 pm
[...] Andy Mabbett reminded me that it’s been a year since James Craig and I published hAccessibility— a look at the accessibility problems inherent in some unsemantic design patterns used in some microformats. [...]

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