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

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Jim Jewett wrote:
>>> 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.
> 
> I guess, though I don't really understand what practical benefit there is 
> to linking the description to the image using aria-describedby.

I have read the rest of the posts in this thread and I also can't see 
what benefit there would be in using aria-describedby in this case. 
Unless I am missing something, the use of @alt to provide alternate text 
is pretty much the same thing, the same kind of programmatic association.

Cheers

Josh