Re: ALT revisited

It is also necessary to distinguish how the alt attribute should be
defined in the HTML specification from the usage suggestions that would be
included in style guidelines. However, the treatment of alt by user agents
could at least be partially explained within the HTML specification itself
rather than in UI guidelines. HTML 2.0 and 3.2 already offer suggestions
as to how certain features of HTML should be presented to the user. Thus,
a recommendation that the value of alt should be defaulted to the name of
the image file, would be reasonable to include within the HTML
specification, provided that the WAI Working Group were to reach a
consensus in favour of that approach. My personal opinion is that authors
should be strongly encouraged to devise their own labels for images, and
that in the case of purely decorative graphics such descriptive contents
should be kept as brief as possible. However, this suggestion belongs
within the province of style guidelines. 

Another possible point of confusion for authors is that HTML offers the
potential for both an alt attribute and an advisory title whenever an
image appears as the content of an anchor element. In most instances that
I have encountered of proper use of the alt attribute, the link target is
described within the alt text. Assuming that readers would not benefit
significantly from both an advisory title and a brief description of the
image, the value of one of the two attributes would become redundant in
such cases. Again, this is probably an issue that should be addressed in
style guidelines. 

I am also in favour of making provision for long descriptions of images,
which could be used whenever the meaning conveyed by a graphic can not be
stated in a brief description, as is required by the alt attribute. I
would rather wait to read the action item before making further comments
on this matter.

Jason White.

Received on Monday, 30 June 1997 19:42:09 UTC