RE: User Testing of Accessiblity Features

> > Andrew, I think there's some doubt in the W3C workgroups about the 
> > necessity for a number of attributes that have 
> traditionally been used 
> > to provide contextual information to AT users, such as 
> headers/id in 
> > tables, longdesc in img, and there is some question about 
> the extent 
> > to which the alt attribute should be used.

I'm not reponding to the debate about whether these should be used.
They are all needed - I'm only stating that it may not be necessary for
alt to be _required_ for all images.

That being said, if HTML5 changes in a way that allows the same
functionality to exist as is offered by header/id, longdesc, and alt but
through a different means, I'm happy to consider it.  The HTML5 group
will undoubtedly need to look at the section 508 and WCAG work (I'd
guess they are on top of this already, just not in complete agreement)
to determine what accessibility requirements need to be met...

AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick

Corporate Accessibility Engineering Manager

Adobe Systems 

akirkpatrick@adobe.com