Re: CFC re ISSUE-31 Missing Alt

On Tue, 27 Apr 2010, Janina Sajka wrote:
> 
> Candidate Resolution
> 
> RESOLUTION: The HTML-A11Y Task Force supports the change proposal at 
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126 to 
> implement WAI Consensus Guidance that a missing text alternative should 
> be an error in conformance checkers. We expect the error text will 
> reference additional guidance on text alternatives in WCAG support 
> materials.

This rationale doesn't match the change proposal cited. The change 
proposal, much like the spec, allows conformance checkers to _not_ report 
an error despite the lack of alternative text in specific cases.

In fact the change proposal merely changes the ways that an author can 
omit alternative text, removing the explicit mention of a user interface 
feature for handling non-Web content, removing the mechanism by which we 
discourage WYSIWYG editors from stuffing alt="" attributes with bogus 
values, removing the permission to use the title="" attribute for its 
intended purpose, and adding three ways to use ARIA to make invalid 
documents valid, which is a layering violation as previously discussed.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 29 April 2010 23:55:52 UTC