Re: Candidate TF Resolution: ISSUE-80 Title

>The specification does not allow title="" to be used as a substitute for
alt="".

The spec currently sanctions the use of title on images as an adequate
alternative when alt is not available.

This is bad langauge design as it promotes the use of content that is hidden
from some users unlike the use of <figcaption>

>but it's unclear why we would want to disallow that, since that's the whole
point of the
>attribute.

It is not being disallowed, it is taking into account the reality that the
use of the title attribute in this case does not act as an adequate
alternative.
Authors can use the title attribute on an image to provide its title, though
this should be discouraged as it hides this information from some users.
I would suggest a warning be provided by conformance checkers alerting
authors to the inadequacy of the use of the title attribute in this
context to provide important information.

regards
stevef


On 13 April 2010 22:16, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Apr 2010, Janina Sajka wrote:
> >
> > RESOLUTION: The HTML-A11Y Task Force does not accept @title as a
> > substitute for @alt, in respect to document conformance.  We do support
> > the change proposal at
> > http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20091203.
>
> The specification does not allow title="" to be used as a substitute for
> alt="". I assume what this is referring to is the ability to use the
> title="" attribute to give the title of the image, but it's unclear why we
> would want to disallow that, since that's the whole point of the
> attribute.
>
> The only other alternative currently is <figcaption>. If we remove
> title="", then we would leave authors forced to use <figure> to include
> critical unknown images, which seems like bad language design.
>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

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