Re: Another summary of alt="" issues and why the spec says what it says

On 4/18/08, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Jim Jewett wrote:
>> On 4/17/08, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 17 Apr 2008, Jim Jewett wrote:

>>>>> ... sometimes there simply is no alternative text available.

>>>>> [examples]

>>>> [proposed (imperfect) alt text that actually was available]

>>> That would be a fine caption -- but as it should be visible
>>> to everyone,

>> How about making the alt optional if -- and only if -- the
>> img has an aria-describedby attribute?

> Wouldn't that require that the image be described
> somewhere? The whole point here is that we don't
> know what the image is.

Yes -- but the description, like alt text in practice, need not be perfect.

There are plenty of reasons that "good enough" alt text may not be
available, but no one has come up with an example where *nothing* was
known about the image.  You just posted your four main examples, and
there was indeed information.  Not as much as we would like, but quite
a bit more than nothing.

You then said that information wasn't suitable for alt text, because
it should be in a visible element instead -- which it could be, if
aria-describedby were used to link the two elements.

-jJ