Re: DRAFT response Re[2]: Request for PFWG WAI review of Omitting alt Attribute for Critical Content

On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 06:48:54PM -0500, David Poehlman wrote:
> Surely, there is no element or attribute anywhere in any spec that would 
> say, when you publish your documents, not only must you use an alt attrib, 
> you also must write into it that the image is not important if it is not 
> important.

The proposal is:

ALT="text" means that "text" is an alternative to the image.
alt="" means that the image is purely decorative or used only as formatting.

Omitting @alt entirely is not allowed, as a matter of syntax, as in HTML 4.01.

There is nothing new or unusual here; this is how specifications prescribe
syntax and semantics.

Of course, there might be substantive objections to the proposal, but this
isn't one of them.

Received on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 01:57:35 UTC