Re: fear of "invisible metadata"

At 09:45 +0200 UTC, on 2007-06-25, Thomas Broyer wrote:

> 2007/6/25, Sander Tekelenburg:
>>
>> I can't agree. Yes, the language must provide authors with means to build
>>web
>> sites that aren't dependant on non-text. But something like <img>fallback
>> content</img> would allow for much richer textual alternatives than the ALT
>> attribute can (and would probably remove the need for longdesc).
>
> Isn't that what <object> is for? <object>fallback content</object>

Yes, but AFAIK <object> is completely broken in IE, so authors won't use it.
And the spec's definition of <object> is rocket science to most authors.

That aside, if we'd want to encourage authors to provide better textual
alternatives to images, they're probably too used to <img> so we'd have to
either deprecate <img> in favour of <object>, or introduce something new that
has obvious advantages. A dedicated <image>fallback</image> element might
perhaps be that. It would also be in line with <video> and <audio>.


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>

Received on Monday, 25 June 2007 12:14:42 UTC