Re: [html4all] New issue: IMG section of HTML5 draft contradicts WCAG 1 & WCAG 2 (draft)

Philip TAYLOR wrote:
> Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
>  >> By "no value at all", do you mean (a) "no ALT attribute"
>  >
>  > Yes.
>  >
>  >> (in which case the answer is that my proposal is
>  >> syntactically valid, assuming a mandate for ALT
>  >
>  > Well, if we insist on requiring the attribute, than not having the
>  > attribute is invalid. Invalid is bad. This is why we are having this
>  > discussion, aren't we?
> 
> Fine, so we agree, do we not ?  My proposal leads
> to valid HTML, and the AT user will learn from the
> ALT text supplied that no more meaningful ALT
> text was available at the time that the page
> was generated.  Not sure where we differ ...

A string saying "there is no alternate text" may be syntactically valid, 
but doesn't help the user at all. It will be displayed/read just like it 
was the alternate text.

In general, requiring values for things that can't always be provided is 
a bad idea. It always leads to authors making up values, which makes the 
  situation *worse* for the people depending on it.

BR, Julian

PS: I do agree though that it's not correct for the HTML WG to simply 
ignore what the other WGs say. But this is a process issue.