- From: Mark Sadecki <mark@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 16:05:23 -0400
- To: wai-wcag-editor@w3.org
Hello WCAG editors, In our weekly HTML Accessibility TF telecon today, Steve Faulkner reported [1] that you have been preparing some feedback on section '4.8.1.1Requirements for providing text to act as an alternative for images' [2] of the HTML5 specification for us. I should start off by saying that your feedback on this is invaluable and greatly appreciated. We know there is similar work going on in other parts of WAI and the more coordination we have, the better. We were hoping you could provide us with specific guidance on a high level question that has been coming up lately [3] regarding the use of a class/category (i.e. logo, pie chart, map) in the alt attribute value to generally identify the type of image. A typical design pattern would be alt="logo: acme corp" or alt="Pie chart: Browser Share - Internet Explorer 25%, Firefox 40%, Chrome 25%, Safari 6% and Opera 4%." There have been a number of bugs already filed regarding specific use cases where this design pattern would be appropriate [4][5][6]. We have discussed filing more. However, we realize that this could be a slippery slope and that it is not always a black and white determination. Specifically, the issue of whether or not you should indicate that an image is a logo if it is a link to the home page. There was some discussion about which was more appropriate: alt="acme corp logo that links to home page" or alt="acme corp home page". Offering this particular guidance could undermine or make less clear the more straight forward guidance provided for other use cases. We look forward to your feedback. Feel free to re-post this to the WCAG WG and/or CC the TF with your reply. Kind regards, Mark [1] http://www.w3.org/2013/09/12-html-a11y-minutes.html#item03 [2] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/embedded-content-0.html#alt [3] http://www.w3.org/2013/07/25-html-a11y-minutes.html#item08 [4] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=22791 [5] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23207 [6] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=22854 -- Mark Sadecki Web Accessibility Engineer World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Initiative Telephone: +1.617.715.4017 Email: mark@w3.org Web: http://w3.org/People/mark
Received on Thursday, 12 September 2013 20:05:24 UTC