Re: Discussion: Text Alternative Survey

hi laura,

ian wrote
>  discourages use of semantic HTML by removing the
>  allowance for using title="" for titles,

it discourages the use of the title atttribute in this case as it is
not up to the job.
it encourages the use of semantic HTML that is up to the job.
detailed reasons are provided in the change proposal
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20091203

regards
steve

On 23 April 2010 07:18, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Thanks to everyone who completed the "Call for Consensus: Text
> Alternatives" survey [1].
>
> I am  especially grateful to Dave and Ian for your comments. They are
> points that need discussion and consideration. Thank you.
>
> Dave commented on the survey:
>
>> A) The replacement text falls far short of the editorial quality of the text it replaces.
>
> Any suggestions for improvement? I'd really appreciate help from you
> or anyone else. I'm no spec writer as you probably can tell <smile>.
>
>> B) Serious issue: Whether or not we say that authoring tools must
>> generate conforming documents, anyone writing a tool would normally
>> wish to and expect to, and may well be instructed to by their
>> management. Being silent on the subject, as the replacement text is,
>>  will simply encourage the behavior of putting in 'nonce' values (e.g.
>>  alt="" or alt="<file-name>").
>
> WAI CG said that they would not object to allowing a "generated" or
> "missing" attribute to address this point. [2]  The document says, "In
> order to address both the validity and human generation concerns, we
> do not oppose the creation of 'autogenerated' and 'missing' attributes
> where either one of these could be used to make an image that does not
> have any human-generated text alternatives valid. (Note: It is
> important that this marker is not included in the alternative text
> string itself.)"
>
> I submitted bugs for both generated and missing attributes. Ian
> rejected the generated attribute [3] bug as WONTFIX.
>
> The missing attribute bug is marked NEEDSINFO [4]. The missing
> attribute was Matt May's original idea from the 2009 WAI CG Task Force
> meetings. I tried to document his idea as best I could on the "Short
> Text Alternatives on <img>" Wiki page [5]. Creating  a missing
> attribute would allow "images whose contents are not known" to be
> labeled as such. It would enable tools to quickly discern where text
> alternatives are needed and allow for future improvement. It would be
> great if would work as it could crowdsource occurrences of missing
> alt. I wrote to Matt on April 2 and asked him to explain the technical
> details on the bug. He hasn't yet. Hopefully he will. I am thinking
> that perhaps a better name for that attribute might be "incomplete".
>
> Both "generated" and "missing" attributes were in earlier versions of
> the change proposal. I took them out at the request of the people who
> attended the face-to-face meeting. I'm not sure why they wanted them
> out. Missing could go into separate Change Proposal or returned to
> this one if people think it is a good idea and we can iron out the
> technical details.
>
>> c) [Minor] one of the lines (the one about paragraphs) is already gone from the editor's
>>  draft at <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#guidance-for-conformance-
>> checkers
>
> Yes, I'm aware of that [6]. I'm leaving it in place for now, as it
> could reappear.
>
> Ian commented on the survey:
>
>> It violates layering by making it possible for removal of ARIA to
>> affect conformance,
>
> Ian, could you explain this further? I did not attend the WAI CG
> sessions when the ARIA options were added. We should have solid
> rationale for the options listed. If layering is a problem, let's try
> to figure it out here.
>
> Right now the only item listed in the set that I am positive of is the
> mandatory alt attribute.
>
>>  discourages use of semantic HTML by removing the
>>  allowance for using title="" for titles,
>
> Using title="" is problematic as it cannot be relied upon as alt can.
> It is only safe to use for extra, advisory information.
>
>>  and encourages longer markup than necessary by suggesting the use of
>> role="presentation" to imply alt="" when alt="", which is shorter,
>> already implies role="presentation".
>
> This is a good point, Ian. Shorter is usually better. The current
> rationale states:
> "role="presentation" programmatically conveys to assistive technology
> that an image is presentational and not of interest."
>
> Does anyone have further/better rationale for why role="presentation" is needed?
>
> Thanks again for your comments. If you have these concerns, I'm sure
> others will too.
>
> Best Regards,
> Laura
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/44061/20040422_text-alt/results
> [2] http://www.w3.org/2009/06/Text-Alternatives-in-HTML5
> [3] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9212
> [4] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9213
> [5] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/IssueAltAttribute#Missing_Attribute
> [6] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9217
>
> --
> Laura L. Carlson
>
>



-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

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Received on Friday, 23 April 2010 08:38:08 UTC