RE: alt and authoring practices

On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, Bonner, Matt (IPG) wrote:
> >>
> >> Well, the data from a web crawl that seem germane would be along the 
> >> lines of percentages of images for the oft-mentioned three cases:
> >>
> >> . have no alt attribute
> >> . have an alt=""
> >> . have an alt="(a descriptive string)"
> 
> Sorry, I should have included more context in my original reply.
> This hypothesis, from Anne van Kesteren, replying to Steven Faulkner:
> ( http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Apr/0486.html )
> 
> > Given that authors make mistakes there are nine possibilities of authoring
> 
> > images:
> > 
> >   1. <img alt="..."> - available -> Correct usage
> >   2. <img alt=""> - available -> Incorrect usage
> >   3. <img> - available -> Incorrect usage
> >   4. <img alt="..."> - missing -> Incorrect usage
> >   5. <img alt=""> - missing -> Incorrect usage
> >   6. <img> - missing -> Correct usage
> >   7. <img alt="..."> - empty -> Incorrect usage
> >   8. <img alt=""> - empty -> Correct usage
> >   9. <img> - empty -> Incorrect usage
> > 
> > It seems your assumption is that on average 9 is more common than 3 
> > and 6 combined and that therefore <img> should be equivalent to <img 
> > alt=""> as far as user agents go and we should have an alternative 
> > solution to cater for 6.
> > 
> > It seems the assumption from the editor is that on average all 
> > incorrect usage is about as likely and that therefore 3 and 6 should 
> > win from 9 and that therefore <img> might as well be used for this 
> > case.

How would you use the data to determine which of the two hypotheses above 
is true?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 16 April 2008 23:46:46 UTC