RE: Proposal: ALT attribute for text

Thank you all for participating in this …
 
ARIA does seem to be a comprehensive proposal for accessibility.
 
The use of <trans> or <abbr> with @title as a work-around until ARIA is adopted and implemented has the downside of not being orthogonal with the use of @alt in <img>. It also requires the screen reader to have a “use the title attribute rather than the spanned text for tags that do not support the alt attribute” or some such option, and requires the user to turn it on, which is problematic.
 
My concern with all this is more social engineering than definition. I think the practicalities of nudging web authors into supporting blind and limited-sight viewers are daunting. It’s hard enough to get authors to include @alt for images (although I was not able to quickly find stats on compliance of the mandatory @alt). I’m thinking that few authors would look into this as deeply as I have … I’m thinking that most query the browser by sticking in an @alt on a <span> to see (hear?) the results, as I first did.
 
> why not ask the question: "can we add @alt to a <span>?"
                            
Is there something I need to do here? Not sure how to “ask the question” …
 
-- Clint Goss, Ph.D.
Web:  <http://www.goss.com> www.goss.com
Email: clint@goss.com
 
From: T.J. Crowder [mailto:tj@crowdersoftware.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 4:08 PM
To: John Foliot
Cc: Martín Szyszlican; Clint Goss; public-html-comments@w3.org
Subject: Re: Proposal: ALT attribute for text
 
All,
 
But again, isn't exactly this already covered, and more robustly, by ARIA's "img" role and associated aria-describedby element? (See my earlier reply to Dr. Goss's proposal.) Or am I missing something, which is entirely possible.
--
T.J. Crowder
Independent Software Engineer
tj / crowder software / com
www / crowder software / com
 
On 24 August 2011 19:49, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote:
Martín Szyszlican wrote:
>
> I say this is very similar to ASCII-art or leetspeek.
> And there's a technique for that in WCAG:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG-TECHS/H86.html
>
> Specifically, this example: <abbr title="Austin Rocks">
> Au5t1N r0xx0rz</abbr>
>
> ¿What do you think?

Hi Martín,

I think that currently this is something of a work-around, as <abbr> is
intended for an abbreviation, and not an actual 'translation' of Au5t1N
r0xxz. The current behaviour of screen readers will be to afford the end
user an ability to understand what the leetspeek represents, but it fails on
the "semantic-ness" of the phrase. I think that Clint's suggestion warrants
further investigation, and as we are currently looking to finalize HTML5 why
not ask the question: "can we add @alt to a <span>?"

(Conversely, might we consider a similar inline element of <trans>
(translation), as in <trans title="Austin Rocks">Au5t1N r0xx0rz</trans>?
HTML.next?)

As a contextual sidebar to this discussion, I was pointed to a recent
blog-posting that raises some related questions: Do you ♥ words with no
letters?- http://ow.ly/6bPEH

JF