RE: request a heartbeat publication of HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives

TPG supports the publication of a heartbeat working draft for the following
reasons:

1.	It will provide a clear point of reference for the guidance as it
stands. The future of longdesc remains to be determined. It would therefore
be more confusing for this document to include longdesc advice now and for
that advice to be removed (should the longdesc attribute not be returned to
the HTML5 spec), than it would be for longdesc advice to be added once a
decision has been made.

2.	Publishing a heartbeat is a marker en-route to final publication. As
David Singer said:

“A heartbeat does not need to be ‘ready’ or ‘done’ or even ‘fully consented
to’ (it is common to insert issue markers for points of contention). Indeed,
we’d be going to LCWD and on from there if it were done.”

3.	                The CFC for publication of the guidance was
supported by all parties concerned [1]. Per the W3C process the document
should have been published as a result. Since this has not happened it does
not seem unreasonable for a heartbeat to be published based on that
consensus, and for the guidance to be updated once the future of longdesc is
known.

Léonie

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2014Jun/0019.html

-- 
Senior Accessibility Engineer, TPG
@LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup

Received on Monday, 13 October 2014 10:03:35 UTC