[Bug 10642] No alternative text description for video key frame (poster)

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10642

--- Comment #46 from John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> 2010-10-05 00:01:18 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #44)
> I think Maciej is right, but I wonder how common it will be for the description
> of the multimedia (audio/video) to be significantly different from the
> description of the poster. 

I'd actually flip that question around, and ask how common will it be for the
alternative text for the poster to be significantly different than the
description of the video? If the value is greater than null (which I think we
all can agree it is/will be), then we owe it to ensure that a means to do so
exists. 

> I guess it's possible that the poster conveys
> *additional* information over and above what the movie contains, but I would
> have thought this was an unlikely case, and perhaps even one that we don't need
> to encourage.

The fact that the author can specify an image other than the first key-frame of
the media opens up the likelihood that authors will do so. We can actively
discourage them from doing so if we believe that to be right, but I wonder
aloud if that is indeed a correct stance? The Draft Spec introduces @poster for
a reason, and further allows authors to choose any image (again for a reason),
so unless we either remove @poster from the Spec outright, no amount of
discouragement alone will totally succeed in ensuring the non-existence of
images as the poster frame that will require alternative text. 

> I guess I am more keen on descriptive and transcriptive text for the movie, and
> once we have that cleanly done, then ask the question "do we need it *as well*
> for the poster?"

At issue is that the image is not the movie, and the movie is not the image:
one might replace the other based upon user-choice (pressing play) or not
(don't press play) and, as has been previously discussed, the poster need not
even be a frame taken from the movie, it can be *any* image the author chooses
to insert. So to answer the question, yes we *do* need both, and I'd prefer
that we not make finding the solution for one problem conditional on solving a
different problem first.

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Received on Tuesday, 5 October 2010 00:01:23 UTC