alt text and applets

Re whether ALT text is needed for an applet if an appropriate equivalent is 
in the content of the applet.

I had an action item to ask WCAG that of WCAG, but it turns out that WCAG 
already says in checkpoint 1.1:

quote
    Use "alt" for the IMG, INPUT, and APPLET elements, or provide a text 
equivalent
    in the content of the OBJECT and APPLET elements.
end quote

Given that word "or" I think it's clear that WCAG does not require ALT text 
when there's an appropriate textual equivalent.

However, that checkpoint seems to imply that all you should put in is 
ordinary text, analogous to ALT text.  Sometimes it's advantageous to 
insert more general accessible HTML.  That's the issue I'm going to raise 
to WCAG.

Len



-------
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
Department of Electrical Engineering
Temple University
423 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA 19122

kasday@acm.org
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday

(215) 204-2247 (voice)
(800) 750-7428 (TTY)

Received on Wednesday, 16 February 2000 14:43:23 UTC