- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:11:12 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>
- Cc: HTML Accessibility Task Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
On Tue, 13 Apr 2010, Janina Sajka wrote: > > RESOLUTION: The HTML-A11Y Task Force supports the change proposal to > remove the image heuristics paragraph from the img Element Section of > the HTML specification as detailed at: > http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImageHeuristics. That change proposal references an older version of the paragraph; is the newer text more acceptable? How about the alternative change proposal?: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Mar/0195.html > RATIONALE: Key points raised at the F2F included: > > Image heuristics text should be stricken from the HTML spec, because it > gives the message that this is viable now, and a reasonable substitute > for @alt. Neither is true. This doesn't appear to be the case for the new text: the new text doesn't say that it's a reasonable subsititute, indeed it goes out of its way to say that alt="" is still required. It also calls out a specific mechanism that actually is viable now. > Should image heuristics become useful in the future then we might > support it but not at present. This seems to undersell the state of the art. > Not putting it in the spec will not cause anyone not to do it if they > were going to do it ... Filling in the attribute is not something the > spec should be doing. The paragraph does not suggest filling in the alt="" attribute using heuristics. > We would not normally take time to object that this exists even though > it goes beyond what a spec needs to provide, but we are concerned that > it could mislead authors into believing they can rely on this when the > current state of technology does not support that. That seems unfair given the lengths to which the spec goes to indicate that alternative text is not optional. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Tuesday, 13 April 2010 21:11:40 UTC