Re: Baby Steps or Backwards Steps?

On Thu, Aug 16, 2007 at 01:43:04PM +1000, Lachlan Hunt wrote:

> IIRC, one of the problems with that approach is that encourages authoring 
> tools wanting to output conforming markup to generate useless alt text, 
> which is often worse than providing no alt attribute at all.

On the contrary, it could also encourage authoring tools wanting to output
conformant markup to prompt the author appropriately in the user interface to
supply the necessary ALT text. Extrapolating from the worst-case
implementation, and then using this as a basis for making normative claims
about what should be in the spec, does nothing to promote better practices on
the part of authoring tools, or of authors for that matter.

Rather, requiring the ALT attribute as in HTML 4, and referring authoring tool
implementors to the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines regarding
appropriate UI implementation techniques, would at least yield a spec that
encourages proper behaviour, which is better than one that does not. In
writing a spec for a new language (even if a revised version of an existing
language), it is possible - desirable in many cases, to issue more precise
conformance requirements; and htese can include conformance requirements, or
at least recommendations, for authoring tool implementations.

Received on Thursday, 16 August 2007 04:07:38 UTC