Re: Adaptive Image Element Proposal

Hi mat,


I have not directly responded to the other emails in this thread suggesting
the use of ARIA as they are discussing the use of the alt on picture, but
will suggest that what has been proposed is overly complicated and
unnecessary.

As previously discussed and bugged I do not support the addition of an alt
attribute to the picture element. It is A sub optimal solution to the
provision of a text alternative on a image, but we are stuck with it for
the <img> element, lets not put the same constraints on picture if we don't
have to.

Can the reasons for not using content of the <picture> sub dom as the text
alternative please be clearly outlined?

The only issue that I have understood is about sub dom content being
displayed in browsers that do not support  <picture>

Are there others?

If the above is the only issue then that can be simply alleviated by
advising authors to confine text alternatives to the fallback img element
alt, until such times that  <picture> is supported.

The way I envisage <picture> to work is similar to how <canvas> is supposed
to work and does work as currently implemented in a number of browsers.
i.e. the sub dom content is only visibly displayed in browsers that do not
support canvas, but the sub Dom content is always available in the
accessibility tree. The difference in implementation that I would suggest
is that no interactive elements be allowed in the picture sub dom as
picture is not an interactive element.

So until UAs support picture, text alternatives can be supplied via the
fallback image. It could still be supplied this way for browsers that
support picture btw.

<picture>
<img alt="text alternative">
</picture>

When and if <picture> becomes implemented in browsers then the text
alternative can be provided as text in the sub dom:

<picture>
This is the text alternative
<img alt="">
</picture>

as I have previously mentioned I don't see what the problem is with doing
the above now and visibly hiding the text using CSS.

Regards

Stevef


On Wednesday, 29 August 2012, Mathew Marquis wrote:

> HTML WG,
>
> The Responsive Images Community Group has published their first pass at an
> “adaptive images” element proposal. It’s still a bit rough-around-the-edges
> at the moment—please let me know if there’s anything you feel should be
> added, removed, or expanded-upon.
>
> Speaking for the RICG: I look forward to your feedback and continued
> discussion of the proposed solution. The news of this proposal has already
> prompted no small amount of cheering from the developer community; I’m
> excited to see how it takes shape!
>
> Thanks,
> Mat Marquis
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG

www.paciellogroup.com | www.HTML5accessibility.com |
www.twitter.com/stevefaulkner
HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives -
dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/
Web Accessibility Toolbar - www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html