[A11y] requiring alt Re: fear of "invisible metadata"

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:08:53 +0200, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>  
wrote:

> ALT should not be required either. It leads to pointless alt="" on  
> images that have no reasonable text equivalent, just to satisfy  
> conformance checkers. And that is actively harmful, because AT can't  
> tell the difference between a semantically null image and a semantically  
> meaningful image with no text alternative.

So if it were not required, you would have alt="" on things that need no  
text, alt="useful information" on things that are useful information, and  
nothing on poorly authored content which may or may not need an alt  
attribute?

The approach we took in ATAG 1 was to require noting that the absence of  
alt is an error, but also require that no default be generated, which is  
in line with this thinking...

cheers

Chaals

-- 
   Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
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Received on Tuesday, 19 June 2007 01:45:32 UTC