Re: alt text & punctuation - best practice?

From Joe Clark,

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Clark" <joeclark@joeclark.org>
To: "WAI-IG" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 9:40 PM
Subject: RE: alt text & punctuation - best practice?


> My 2 cents... for consistency sake, there should always be a full-stop.

If this were 1857, sure.
DP: Thank you!

> Readers cannot distinguish the difference between a single keyword and a
> sentence: if we have several keywords, the reader interprets them as words
> that make up a sentence.

"Several keywords" should be an ordered or unordered list.


> Until such times as all screen readers are intelligent enough to pause
> after a heading, it is kind - and surely best practice -- to punctuate
> headings, to stop them running confusingly into the following text.

We're not doing until-user-agents guidelines anymore. User agents have had
a lot of "until" to get their act together. And we're not about to rewrite
the rules of the English language (for example) just because somebody's
screen reader yammers in a certain way.
DP: Agreed <grin>  An aural rendering which is trying to be achieved here is
far different from using a screen reader to interact with content.  IN the
former, it is required that little judgement be needed nor permitted.  In
the latter, we have full controll over content rendering and need to know
how to exercise it.

Of course, I'm the type of guy who finds errors in _Eats, Shoots &
Leaves_, so maybe I'm just more interested in this than most.
dp: Are you saying that they are spelled rong, eets, shutes, leeves?

-- 

    Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
    Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
    Expect criticism if you top-post

Received on Tuesday, 22 June 2004 08:21:31 UTC