Comments on: hAccessibility – Unhappy First Birthday

By: Dates and coordinates in HTML5 « Mabblog

Dates and coordinates in HTML5 « Mabblog — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:31:53 +0000

[...] been a staunch and early critic of the accessibility problems caused by abusing the element for things like [...]

By: Andy Mabbett

Andy Mabbett — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:21:17 +0000

On checking my archives for an unrelated discussion, I found today that I first raised issues with abbr-abuse on 24 April 2006, much earlier than I thought I had done so. The cabal was in denial, even then.

By: Andy Mabbett

Andy Mabbett — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:15:11 +0000

@Lee: the longer we leave it, the more existing examples mis-using abbr there will be. A year has already been wasted.

Also, don’t forget that microformats are used in HTML, not just XHTML.

By: Lee Jordan

Lee Jordan — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:03:25 +0000

I guess because many examples still use abbr, it’s going to be hard to break away from it. Still not too late to do something about it though.

@Toby: My thought about that is HTML validation errors about trimming empty tags.

I’m going down in a blaze of something anyway with this next one: Namespaces and the creation of a microformat:ns? That’s why it’s called xHTML? Anyway fire away! Why not have an option for xHTML developers to extend HTML properly?

By: Bruce Lawson’s personal site : hAccessibility, one year on

Bruce Lawson’s personal site : hAccessibility, one year on — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:08:58 +0000

[...] 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. [...]

By: pigsonthewing

pigsonthewing — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:00:08 +0000

@Toby: Try viewing that with CSS disabled. And doesn’t Operator ignore such “hidden” content?

By: Toby Inkster

Toby Inkster — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:54:33 +0000

One workaround that I've found involves the intermingling of the existing lt;abbr> pattern and value excerpting rules. It works along these lines:


  28 April 2008

It seems to work in many existing parsers (not all sadly) and I am yet to notice any apparent accessibility problems.

By: James Craig

James Craig — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:45:59 +0000

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.