Some comments on the ISSUE-142 decision

These are some comments about the decision [1] on ISSUE-142 to not add
a way to provide alternate text for the poster attribute on the video
element in HTML5.

The change proposal [2] that was adopted fails to provide any way to
provide an alternate text for the image provided in the poster
attribute on the video element. By adopting this change proposal does
the HTML-WG mean that there is no need to make all features in HTML5
accessible to everyone? The discussion should have been about how to
make the best possible technical solution to this problem (or remove
the poster attribute completely, but these seems like a bad option for
everyone).

Looking at the decision it seems like if this alternate text for the
poster attribute should be mandatory or not caused some discussion.
There is no need to decide that now, in fact why not wait until there
is a decision on ISSUE-31 about alternate text on the img element so
that HTML5 is consistent in how it handles alternate text on all
images? In addition to that it seems like that people are already
using the video element without alternate text for the poster element
is considered a problem:

"[...] and that it introduces a non-backwards compatible change which
affects existing content and implementations without providing a
migration plan."

HTML5 is in an early step in the process to becoming a web standard.
Early adopters of the specification clearly must assume that there
will be many changes made to the specification at this stage and that
they will need to adapt to them. Adding a way to provide alternate
text for an image ( or anything else that help make some feature in
HTML5 more accessible ) should not be seen as a problem even for early
adopters, this will help them create HTML5 documents / web browsers
that are accessible to everyone.

Because of this I support John Foliot’s efforts [3] to get this
decision changed.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Mar/0690.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/NoPosterAlt
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Mar/0697.html

Received on Monday, 4 April 2011 17:01:41 UTC