The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently invited a broad review of HTML5 and related specifications to help resolve outstanding issues. The review is being undertaken to ensure that the specification meets W3C’s commitments in areas such as accessibility.

In the light of W3C’s goal of the Web being available to all and the HTML5 working group’s acknowledgement that there are open issues about some of the HTML5 features, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the W3C is seeking accessibility-related comment and participation. A recent W3C blog post invites reviewers of the main HTML5 specification to coordinate their accessibility comments through the Joint HTML and PFWG Accessibility Task Force (A11Y TF). This Task Force has sub-groups in the areas of text alternatives, Canvas, media, and WAI-ARIA.

One of the related specifications is HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives, and many readers of the AGIMO Blog will be pleased to see this comprehensive collection of different image types and the ways that text alternatives will be able to be provided in HTML5, though much of it applies already. Some of you may not find your situations adequately described, and we encourage you to provide feedback as part of this review.

You might start by reading the W3C’s “Ensuring Accessibility Support in HTML5” blog post paying particular attention to some of the open issues such as ‘longdesc’, the canvas or Media elements, the WAI-ARIA incorporation, and the coverage of text alternatives.