- From: Gez Lemon <g.lemon@webprofession.com>
- Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:47:36 +0100
- To: John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>
- Cc: Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, HTML Accessibility Task Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>, "Michael(tm) Smith" <mike@w3.org>, Michael Cooper <cooper@w3.org>, Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org>, wai-cg@w3.org
On 9 April 2010 22:51, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote: > Laura Carlson wrote: >> >> > >> > I don't see anything in the resolution that takes this away, >> >> Oh but it does. >> >> * An error is something that is invalid. >> * A warning is something that is valid. > > Hi Laura, > > I am concerned about getting bogged down in the semantics of a word. Where > are you taking these definitions from? Henri's validators.nu (which, > AFAIK, is really the only HTML5 validator we have available to us)? Isn't this the crux of the issue? The face-to-face group were more concerned with a glimmer of hope (nothing guaranteed) that Henri's validator (an experimental application, not formally associated with the W3C) would be more likely to flag missing alt as a warning than an error. It appears to be an issue of compromise, albeit one-sided with no guarantees. By anyone's definition, images without a text alternative (even if that alternative is to indicate the image is presentational) are structurally incomplete - an error. The specification should state that images MUST have a text alternative (by any of the means proposed by the ALT task force set up to deal with this issue), but the face-to-face accessibility task force (emphasis on face-to-face, and that this hasn't yet been accepted by the task force as a whole) are willing to compromise the specification for someone's validator. > Frankly, we can call it 'green jello' Being a foreigner, I have no idea what green jello is, but it sounds an appropriate name for defining something that is structurally incomplete as a warning, rather than an error. > if the behavior we got was that when > an <img> lacked an @alt value the author was taken to the WAI-authored > page on how to fix this 'broken-ness'. To me, *THAT* is what we want to > have, rather than get stuck over a word. Personally, I would rather the specification be correct, rather than trying to satisfy someone's validator. There aren't even any guarantees it will be flagged as a warning by this validator; just a suggestion that it's more likely to be accepted as a warning in this validator if the accessibility task force are willing to compromise. By lowering expectations at this early stage, the accessibility task force are going to find it even more difficult to insist that images without a text alternative are structurally incomplete when it's refused, as they are asserting that it's not that important (just a warning). -- _____________________________ Supplement your vitamins http://juicystudio.com http://twitter.com/gezlemon
Received on Saturday, 10 April 2010 04:48:15 UTC