Re: Draft text for summary attribute definition

I am going to break my resolution not to get into this, but the illogic of
what's going on in this silly "verbal war" compels me to point out something
about "semantics" in its non-Web sense:

All of this brouhaha about "layout tables" is basically absurdist dogma.
>From a more sane point of view ALL tables are "layout tables". The data they
inform is available in other forms just as it is in all graphical
representations of data. The fact that a "table" that has no underlying data
can be posted as a presentation method is no different than using a
piechart/bargraph for decoration or, more usually to give an impression of
"validity" or a convenient way to show text.

*What matters for accessibility is that until there is an ai-based screen
reader that does as well as a human professional screen reader looking over
your shoulder, it is imperative that all of these features being discussed
like summary/alt and all of the title/caption choices be available for the
primitive Assistive Technology we suffer with to date.
*
Just as automatically determining if an alt attribute is useful cannot
(yet?) be done by a machine doesn't furnish an excuse for ever letting it be
optional - it simply requires that authors do better than many have been
doing to date. Same for these other issues.

Love