Re: Study project: ALTifier or text-equiv -- Please choose!

to follow up on what Leonard R. Kasday said:
>  
> >ASG::
> >1.  I have to admit I don't understand the original question.  It
> >seems to me that whether the text is put in place of the image,
> >or is put in a ALT attribute so the browser can put it in place
> >of the image, the work is in scavenging the rest of the site and
> >web to get plausible text, not in sewing it back into the
> >offending page.  
> 

> LRK::
> My understanding of the original question was that the tool that the
> webmaster would use would have the webmaster put in the ALT text explicitly
> by hand whereas the alternative would use various heuristics many of which
> would simply guess at the ALT text.  In other words, only the second one is
> the scavenger.

ASG::
I see.  Well, only the scavenger is a topic fit for research.
And the other function is covered with tasks already on the
books.  We have TOM today to do that, and the A-prompt that
Toronto is developing will be a step beyond that, and Pieper's
student will do something (with or without incorporating
A-prompt) along these lines.  

In the A-prompt camp, we are looking for better sources of
"nominations" or "sugested values" for the interactive author, so
that the process is fast, less error prone, and more people use
it.  That is where the text-equiv function comes into the
author-side implementation; but it still needs to be prototyped
and evaluated, and can be released for user-side application as a
workaround for all the authors that are not paying attention.

So I see application for the text-equiv techniques on both the
author and user side, and I see the author scenario encompassing
both automatic suggestions and manual judgement and rewording.

Al

Received on Monday, 26 October 1998 13:33:14 UTC