- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:54:44 +0200
- To: Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com>
- Cc: Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org>, HTML Accessibility Task Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>, faulkner.steve@gmail.com
Richard Schwerdtfeger, Tue, 26 Apr 2011 08:33:42 -0500: > > Judy, > > Steve and I met on the alt="" and role="presentation" discussion. Please > make the following change to the response: > > <change> [ snip ] > </change> > <to> > The default semantics for and image with alt="" is role="presentation". The > accessibility API mapping is such that, when alt="", the <img> element is > removed from the accessibility API tree to improve assistive technology > performance as well as browser performance in that the browser is not > maintaining accessible objects for these presentational elements. > Applications, such as those from IBM, have used role="presentation" to > remove these objects from the accessibility tree as HTML4 does not have the > same mapping as we have specified for HTML 5. So, not allowing alt="" and > role="presentation" to be used interchangeably violates consistency with > the default HTML 5 semantics and is inconsistent with the ARIA > specification. > </to> This only gives a justification from an ARIA point of view. The validator is also supposed to help the author avoid wasting his/her time. E.g. to avoid the problem that the user agent auto-generates a 'Image' text for the lacking @alt. The intent of the author can of course be spotted by the validator when he/she adds role=presentation. So the validator should ask the author to add empty alt. I would recommend to explain why the validator should only have ARIA supporting AT in mind when it decides what validataes. It is unclear to me how permission to add @role=presentation without simultaneously adding @alt "violates consistency with the default HTML 5 semantics". I also don't see how it is inconsistent with ARIA. How is it inconsistent with ARIA? -- leif halvard silli
Received on Tuesday, 26 April 2011 14:55:18 UTC