Re: Web Accessibility Tutorials: Images and Tables

Hi Eric,

after some research I found this (3.2.3.1 Empty Attribute Syntax )
	http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/#empty-attr

Also see:
	http://www.w3.org/TR/html/infrastructure.html#boolean-attributes
though wording is much less straightforward here.


So except for boolean attributes an attribute without a value is illegal.  And even for boolean attributes it is illegal for XHTML. This implies that the synatx used on the mage tutorial overview page is simply incorrect  correct and requires fixing.


BTW - Personally I think, when writing a decent spec it should not have an impact that some agents can handle illegal syntax - the spec should simply get it right.



Olaf


On 15 Sep 2014, at 18:38, Eric Eggert <ee@w3.org> wrote:

> Hi Olaf,
> 
> [3]
> The last bit goes back to my limited familiarity with details in HTML:
> - is
> alt
> really equivalent to
> alt=""
> ?
> - if so, why do the examples in W3C WAI related content I have run into (and definitely those in the image tutorial) use
> alt=""
> ?
> 
> In modern HTML5 browsers, alt will be interpreted as alt="", but I don’t consider using this as best practice, especially when educating website authors:
> 
> Having the ="" in there show that the empty alt is a deliberate decision and not something forgotten.
> 
> Older browsers or assistive technology might treat alt without a value as missing and might announce the filename instead of nothing.
> 
> Using two syntaxes like this with minor differences and little to no gain would only confuse some people and would be hard to explain, imho.
> 
> Best, Eric
> 
> --
> 
> Eric Eggert, Web Accessibility Specialist
> WAI-ACT Project
> 
> I’m yatil on IRC.
>