RE: dated WD snapshot of alt techniques document

I am glad WCAG is vague about trademark and copyright symbols in alt text. 
There are some times when including is probably a good idea, but most of 
the time they create a lot of extra verbage that is really annoying. It 
should not be overly prescriptive about such details.

Matt King
IBM Senior Technical Staff Member
I/T Chief Accessibility Strategist
IBM BT/CIO - Global Workforce and Web Process Enablement 
Phone: (503) 578-2329, Tie line: 731-7398
mattking@us.ibm.com



From:   "Birkir Gunnarsson" <birkir.gunnarsson@deque.com>
To:     "'Schnabel, Stefan'" <stefan.schnabel@sap.com>, "'Steve Faulkner'" 
<faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, "'HTML Accessibility Task Force'" 
<public-html-a11y@w3.org>, <public-html-admin@w3.org>, "'Philippe Le 
Hégaret'" <plh@w3.org>, "'Michael[tm] Smith'" <mike@w3.org>, "'Janina 
Sajka'" <janina@rednote.net>, "'Chaals McCathieNevile'" <w3b@chaals.com>, 
"'Sam Ruby'" <rubys@intertwingly.net>, "'Paul Cotton'" 
<Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com>, "'Maciej Stachowiak'" <mjs@apple.com>, "'W3C 
WAI Protocols & Formats'" <public-pfwg@w3.org>, 
Date:   10/16/2014 05:11 AM
Subject:        RE: dated WD snapshot of alt techniques document



Two hot topics still not present in this otherwise excellent guide:
1.      CSS icon images. Often CSS .background images are used on links or 
buttons to indicate e.g. file type (when link points to a file rather than 
a webpage), or when link points to a page that requires a log in 
(background image of a lock). We should make a note of this in the guide, 
explain why you cannot use an alt tag on these images (when included usin 
CSS, these are useless, at least for now) and propose a few alternatives 
(1. Make the background image into an actual <img> tag with appropriate 
alt, 2. Use title element of link or button 3. Add text to link or button 
text, either visible or hidden). If interested, I would be happy to write 
a draft of this section.
2.      I often get questions on whether symbols such as copyright or 
trademark have to be in the alt text for an image when visible in the 
image, and whether omitting them is a WCAG violation. (functionally, when 
image is part of a link for instance, I do not see how this information is 
relevant to its meaning to the user, however users may want to know if an 
image contains a trademark or other legal symbol, why they would want to 
know is not obvious to me) 
I have read the WCAG spec and it is vague on this topic, but the W3C/WCAG 
websites do not include these symbols in their alt text). Perhaps this 
topic is left unintentionally vague, but if I am misunderstanding and 
there are guidelines, it would be good to include them.
 
Cheers, keep up the good work!
 
From: Schnabel, Stefan [mailto:stefan.schnabel@sap.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 6:34 AM
To: Steve Faulkner; HTML Accessibility Task Force; 
public-html-admin@w3.org; Philippe Le Hégaret; Michael[tm] Smith; Janina 
Sajka; Chaals McCathieNevile; Sam Ruby; Paul Cotton; Maciej Stachowiak; 
W3C WAI Protocols & Formats
Subject: RE: dated WD snapshot of alt techniques document
 
I’m sold. Most comprehensive and competent W3C techniques guide for the 
topic so far.
 
Only thing missing are references + more examples with ARIA properties as 
alternative. Example: “1.8 A purely decorative image that doesn't add any 
information “ or “ 2.3 Using an empty alt attribute alt="" ” to indicate 
decorative images using role=”presentation”.
 
Regards
Stefan
 
From: Steve Faulkner [mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com] 
Sent: Donnerstag, 16. Oktober 2014 11:58
To: HTML Accessibility Task Force; public-html-admin@w3.org; Philippe Le 
Hégaret; Michael[tm] Smith; Janina Sajka; Chaals McCathieNevile; Sam Ruby; 
Paul Cotton; Maciej Stachowiak; W3C WAI Protocols & Formats
Subject: Re: dated WD snapshot of alt techniques document
 
Apologies, please use the following URL
http://rawgit.com/w3c/alt-techniques/54c868254d49bac4ca1efa7d9907cc85bfa0a3cd/index.html

I made a mistake in the update of the HTML5 reference and have fixed 
accordingly 
https://github.com/w3c/alt-techniques/commit/54c868254d49bac4ca1efa7d9907cc85bfa0a3cd


--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1
 
On 16 October 2014 10:37, Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,

in an effort to break the inertia surrounding this document I have created 
a dated WD snapshot:

http://rawgit.com/w3c/alt-techniques/c56027b5d9125b40695c7fbc128af918515273f7/index.html

It incorporates Janina's requests:
removal of details/summary advice
update reference to pint to HTML /TR
I have added links to outstanding bugs with special reference to those 
about longdesc.
I also updated one example and closed the related bug [
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=25961], as I consider it 
wholly uncontroversial and an improvement on the current example.
I consider once this WD is published the group(s) should swiftly appoint 
new editor(s). I would suggest that any editors appointed have a good 
working knowledge of alt techniques.
It is my understanding that both Shane McCarron and David McDonald have 
volunteered and I personally have confidence that both of them working as 
a team would serve as excellent replacements.

--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1