Re: img@relaxed CP [was: CfC: Close ISSUE-206: meta-generator by Amicable Resolution]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 5:04 AM, Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
>> When a developer knows an image does not contain important content,
>> they can use alt="" and it will not be exposed to the accessibility
>> hierarchy.
>>
>> Equally when a developer does not know the alternative text for an
>> image, they can omit alt and it *will* be exposed to the accessibility
>> hierarchy.
>
> you are making a false assumption, this only works if the generator
> image developer controls where the content is published.
>  The developer does not necessarily control the content of the page
> the image is embedded in, so the developer cannot ensure that only
> images that are significant have alt omitted.

The developer cannot add an additional attribute only to images that
*are* significant in ingested third-party content any more than they
can provide appropriate text equivalents.

I don't think it would be a good idea for developers to ingest images
in third-party content with alt="", assume they nevertheless _might_
be significant, and override those provided text alternatives that
hide the images by robotically adding an attribute to force exposure
of all images in third-party content to the accessibility hierarchy,
if that's what you're envisaging (?).

> that is not the scope of the discussion,  it has been identified that
> providing an indication of the image significance to AT is an
> important aspect for some involved

We've already got negative signals to indicate that (don't include
alt="", don't include role="presentation", don't include
aria-hidden="true", etc.) We don't need a positive signal too,
especially as it wouldn't solve the problem for ingested content as
there would be no sensible way to apply it.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Received on Saturday, 4 August 2012 09:41:44 UTC