Moving forward on "HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives"

Colleagues:

As discussed separately on several W3C lists recently, there's
significant desire to move forward with at least a heartbeat publication
of "HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives."

http://w3c.github.io/alt-techniques/

There's a fundamental flaw between the stated intent of this document
and the approaches it discusses and recommends. Given that we have HTML
in PR, it would seem reasonable that a document purporting to discuss
"best practices for authors" would not include content based on features
which so recently failed to satisfy HTML CR.

In other words, either this is truly a "best practices' document and
should include only approaches based on features able to reach PR status
today, and the document should point to the PR (today, and the TR when
it's available) when referring to HTML, orit should be called something
other than "best practices." If the feature in question is unable to
reach PR, it's too immature to be considered a "best" practice today.

Currently, the above draft URL  points to the HTML nightlies, which
would be OK for something like a "Road Map to Future Alternative Text
Approaches," but not for "best practices" today.

I have filed a bug reflecting this concern:

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=27038

I believe we need a true "best practices" note. Therefore, as I stated
in my bug, my preference would be to remove the guidance not supported
by the current PR until after we conclude a V. 1.0 of this note. It
would be appropriate to reintroduce more speculative approaches, and
point again to the nightlies in a draft version following the conclusion
of a version 1.0 of this note-track document.

While I cannot categorically claim making such edits would remove
objections to moving this document forward to note status today, I
believe it would indeed cover the overwhelming majority of current
objections. I do believe it's the best path forward.

Janina


-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Received on Monday, 13 October 2014 20:40:44 UTC