Include information about icons in text-notifications for comments

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Include information about icons in text-notifications for comments

Area:
comments, email notifications

Summary:
Include information about the icon in text-only emailed comment notifications.

Description:
For people who get plain text comment notifications and read their comments primarily in email, and load the site only when replying, this would be helpful in not missing nuances of the conversation being carried out in icons.

It is now easier to include icons meaningfully in text notifications because of the icon description field (though visual users using a graphic browser can still load the page and see the icon for themselves). The keyword used to select the icon should also be included, as this can provide some nuance in why that particular icon was chosen. If the comment was not chosen by keyword, the description should still be included: while many people know their friends' default icons by now, it may be a stranger commenting, or someone may have a new default icon.

This gives better historical context for people who save their comment notifications, as sometimes people change their icons. Rodney McKay viciously removing stupid obnoxiousness is a much better pair with a rant about Not Being That Guy than a mostly-unwrapped Pretty Young Thing.

The addition of icons can change a conversation: for example, "I see" is fairly neutral. A positively themed icon would make it unambiguously positive; a "FAIL" icon would make it unambiguously negative, and might push the conversation over the line where a community administrator might want to step in. (This situation happened years ago, but I remember it vividly.)

This would also be useful for comment edits: sometimes people (like me) edit their comments and only change the icon, and forget to put an edit reason. This results in the same text, without explanation, being sent in the emailed text notification of the edited comment. An observant recipient is probably going to figure that it was an icon edit, but including icon information in the notification would be helpful.

Poll #6523 Include information about icons in text-notifications for comments

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 55

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
34 (61.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
4 (7.3%)

(I have no opinion)
17 (30.9%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[deborah]

Among accessibility experts, the jury is out (since the standard says they need to be different, but the practice makes that inaccessible). But in general, it's a bad idea to make content available if you know it isn't going to be available to users with disabilities.

I think it's not supposed to be better when they are different from an accessibility standpoint; user agents don't make title text available to keyboard users and the most screenreader users, so it's simply not accessible content to that audience. The people I see arguing that they should be different say that simply because the standard says they should be different, and there is a large core of accessibility experts who says that we should be writing to the standards and insisting that the developers of browsers and adaptive technology support the standards properly. Which, I am totally in favor of in theory. But in practice, people keep putting content in the title attribute that I have no access to.

So in other words, from a STANDARDS standpoint, what you are doing is bad. But from an ACCESSIBILITY standpoint, what you are doing is exactly right. IMHO.

[marahmarie]

Excellent response. In my own head, I agree with you, standards be damned (especially that one - it makes no sense whatsoever, which I realized yet again while trying to explain it to you). That's why I always put all the information I can cram in into both tags.

My only wish - and this is fully under my control, so I have no excuse except laziness, lack of time, and/or lack of creativity - is that my descriptive text for images was more descriptive. I often use it for things like snarky asides that don't tell you much, when I should focus more succinctly on exactly what the picture conveys.