RE: CFC re ISSUE-31 Missing Alt

aloha, sean!

i agree with you that the repair technique should be in ATAG, but
not every author uses an authoring tool (i still do my encoding 
by hand because i have yet to find an ATAG compliant authoring 
tool) and such guidance should be addressed somewhere in the 
HTML5 document suite -- perhaps as part of SteveF's advice on 
proper use of text alternatives document...

crowd-sourcing isn't a reliable solution today, and i think that
crowd-sourcing would only work if there was a storage-and-retrieval
system such as that which one can use to get metadata about an
audio CD -- if you, as creator of that image, properly annotate it,
then your metadata should be presented to me first (as the default
metadata), and then i should be able to choose amongst other terser
or longer descriptions...

so, no, as things stand today, with conflicts over metadata schemas
i don't think that crowd-sourcing is a viable option, but i can
perceive the utility in crowd-sourcing, provided that i am provided
with a means of choosing which metadata -- if it exists -- i would
like applied, with the author's own metadata as the default...

i think that there are also cultural considerations that need to be
taken into account -- that was one of the reasons why i put up my
photos on MyOpera page: to find out if there were significant
differences in perceptions of a common image...  but, given cultural 
considerations, if i were from country X and spoke language Y, i might 
want to at least check and compare the metadata submitted from country 
X in language Y to ascertain that which would be self-evident to a 
sighted user from country x in language Y

so, no, i do not think that this is a viable option today or in the 
near future, but i think it is an approach that does warrant further 
exploration within the accessibility and standards community...

gregory.
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             Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
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---------- Original Message -----------
From: Sean Hayes <Sean.Hayes@microsoft.com>
To: David Singer <singer@apple.com>, Laura Carlson
<laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
Cc: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>, HTML Accessibility Task
Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
Sent: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:17:40 +0000
Subject: RE: CFC re ISSUE-31 Missing Alt

> I think Gregory's proposed text; while valid, is more of an ATAG 
> issue than an HTML one.  What I think we need to debate is if 
> there is any normative remedial action we want to propose for an 
> HTML5 UA to make if it gets an image where the author has 
> explicitly said I'm not going to tell you what this image is, or 
> why I included it.
> 
> I'm not sure that there is, given that the suggested techniques 
> are heuristic, fragile, and very likely to change over time. 
> It's something we might want to bring up with the UAAG folks 
> though.  It could be an informative note, but even that may 
> encourage authors to think that these techniques are more robust 
> than they really are.
> 
> This is slightly different than allowing an attribute for the 
> author to make the statement in the first place, which we seem 
> to have come to some consensus on.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-html-a11y-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-a11y-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of David Singer Sent: Thursday, April 
> 29, 2010 3:00 AM To: Laura Carlson Cc: Gregory J. Rosmaita; HTML 
> Accessibility Task Force Subject: Re: CFC re ISSUE-31 Missing Alt
> 
> 'a missing tag' is ambiguous (and 'a missing tag must be 
> generated' could be seen as a contradiction...)
> 
> a tag stating that 'alt' is known to be missing, perhaps?
> 
> 'which can then be...' appears to be connected to the authoring 
> tool, rather than this new tag
> 
> overall:
> if an authoring tool prompts an author for alt text and the 
> author explicitly refuses to supply it, then a tag stating that 
> 'alt' is missing MUST be auto-generated by the authoring tool; 
> the presence of this tag can then be used to trigger a retrieval 
> process such as that outlined in the emails on RDFPic [1] and 
> the RDF and Photos W3C Note [2]
> 
> I'm not at all sure I agree with this approach, but we may as 
> well be clear about what we are debating!
> 
> On Apr 28, 2010, at 16:51 , Laura Carlson wrote:
> 
> > Hi Gregory,
> > 
> >> my 2 cents (american) on an auto-generated authoring-tool inserted 
> >> missing alt tag:
> >> 
> >> if an authoring tool prompts an author for alt text and the author 
> >> explicitly refuses, then a missing tag MUST be auto-generated by the 
> >> authoring tool, which can then be used to trigger a retrieval process 
> >> such as that i outlined in my post on RDFPic [1] and the RDF and 
> >> Photos W3C Note [2]
> > 
> > Thank you very much for this. I added a section on the Change Proposal 
> > for metadata using your text as a start.
> > http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/User:Lcarlson/ImgElement#Metadata
> > 
> > Thoughts everyone? Ideas for improvement? Can anyone not live with this?
> > 
> > Best Regards,
> > Laura
> > 
> > --
> > Laura L. Carlson
> >
> 
> David Singer
> Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
------- End of Original Message -------

Received on Thursday, 29 April 2010 13:40:43 UTC