Re: ALT revisited

> ALT represents an example of an opportunity to clean up the
> accessibility of the Web by improving on the definition of the
> Web media.  We may think that the problem is that the authors are
> populating the standards wrong, but it is the standards that we
> have the greatest leverage over.  We should not neglect a chance
> to make the situation better by what we can change; relying on 
> what others have to do for us should be used sparingly.

Well said, and thanks for the report.

I've always thought ALT was under-specified in the HTML spec, which
only says something like: "For user agents that cannot display
images, this attribute specifies alternate text."
The "cannot" in the above sentence can be loaded with semantics..

I'm not sure I agree that playing with the cache is too much asking
for a Screen-Reader user encountering this Netscape problem but I
agree that the Browser guidelines should make clear what we want (to
palliate the HTML specs vagueness).

I expect the LongDesc action item to cover part or all of that topic
(semantics of ALT/TITLE/DLINK).

Received on Friday, 27 June 1997 11:23:49 UTC