Re: WCAG considering amending F65 to NOT fail missing ALT text if title or aria-label is present

I fully agree with Marco,

>> I now declare that I firmly stand with the opinion that F65 should NOT be softened. >>

Alt attributes are simple, clear, easy to use and understand, compatible with accessibility software and tools.

Richard

From: Marco Zehe 
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 8:18 AM
To: Detlev Fischer 
Cc: David MacDonald ; HTML Accessibility Task Force ; WCAG ; public-comments-wcag20@w3.org 
Subject: Re: WCAG considering amending F65 to NOT fail missing ALT text if title or aria-label is present


On Nov 26, 2013, at 9:53 PM, Detlev Fischer <detlev.fischer@testkreis.de> wrote:


  The intended change of F65 is driven by the aim to publish more ARIA Techniques to establish ARIA as part of the toolbox, hopefully to be picked up by devs to make all sorts of fancy web stuff more accessible. I believe that this will be seen as rightful aim by most - after all, we can't stop the fancy stuff out there, we can only hope to provide the means to make it accessible. If the ARIA Techniques help doing that, this also requires some revisiting of Common Failures to even out the inconsistencies that Jared has pointed out. (To be more precise, this is necessary if we stick to the rule that finding a failure in the test of a Failure Technique will fail the SC in all cases.)


Hi all, 

one thing to consider is that, if a web developer isn't going to put alt on an image, they're just as unlikely to put aria-label on it. There is a bullet-proof way to make images accessible, which is backwards compatible into the 90s. There simply is no reason to soften F65 in my opinion, by allowing ARIA on an image. Alt text is established, and those familiar with accessibility including ARIA are also familiar with alt text.

I agree with janina's comment about ARIA not going away, but it should also be not the catch-all solution for just anything. It has a specific purpose, to bridge gaps, and that's what it is doing. And an img tag is nothing new, nor is it something fancy, and there is an established way to make it accessible.

So despite my earlier concerns re CSS background images, I now declare that I firmly stand with the opinion that F65 should NOT be softened.

CSS background images and so forth are discussions for other types of success criteria and deserve their own topic.

Marco

Richard Warren
Technical Manager
Website Auditing Limited (Userite)
http://www.website-accessibility.com