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

If information and meta data about the image is already on the page the 
image itself become decorative for the most part. The others ways is to 
add a specific alt or an alt with redundant information.
When the image is a link there is specific rules the alt attribute must 
give the function of the link like see the picture of my dog in bigger 
format or download the picture of my dog, jpeg, xxx Ko. If in flicker 
the image is a link they do a mistake to put an empty alt.
With this rules even for UA like Lynx the right information is still 
there and more usable that a url to the file

For wcag , i don't see where Chaals see that but i clearly see the 
recommendation to use empty alt text for decorative image in wcag 2.0
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/20070517/Overview.php#text-equiv-all
situation F

I was not talking against you and i was not only speaking about this alt 
thread but also about the summary and headers thread witch from what i 
see is becoming more and more sterile even after the test case on this 
point show that there are useful and used by AT.

So yes, if you want to change the spec to let page validate with no alt 
attribute on image you can , i don't think it's a good idea and don't 
think the wcag working group will by ok with that but maybe i am wrong.
I think we really need to ask their opinion about any change that will 
result to an possible accessibility issue.
>
>
> On Jun 19, 2007, at 12:54 AM, aurélien levy wrote:
>
> Is skipping the photo really better than mentioning the filename in 
> this case? It's not purely decorative, it matters that it is there. A 
> text-only but visual UA like Lynx should should the filename with a 
> download link for instance. In any case, since you described a 
> behavior difference between omitting alt and specifying alt="", I 
> presume that there's cases where either behavior is useful.
>
> Furthermore, as Chaals mentioned, adding a default empty alt text is 
> contrary to WCAG.
>
> My comments are not speaking for the group, only for myself. Also, I'm 
> not suggesting to remove anything. I think the alt attribute should be 
> retained. But I think that it should no longer be required, since 
> requiring it always leads to worse accessibility and 
> media-independence in some cases, in my opinion.
>
> Regards,
> Maciej
>

Received on Tuesday, 19 June 2007 08:46:37 UTC