Re: Investigating the proposed alt attribute recommendations in HTML 5

On 9/1/07, Sander Tekelenburg <st@isoc.nl> wrote:

> > An aural UA might announce "[Embedded graphic titled Seargent Pepper
> > and Robin-two] from pinktigger"
>
> Right. But here the point is that the original alt text just isn't any good
> -- it's not an equivalent. The only thing that @title has to do with this is
> that it is *one* way the markup could have been authored better, as you show.

Well, both attributes exist for accessibility, but each carries
different semantics.  Beyond that, I didn't mean to imply a
"relationship".

> But instead of using @title, one could just as well improve the 'regular'
> text alongthese lines:
>
> <figure>
> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/11994078@N04/1237874293/"><img
> src="url"></a>
> <legend>
> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/11994078@N04/">pinktigger</a>'s cats,
> Sgt.Pepper &amp; Robin2.
> </legend>
> </figure>
>
> To be clear: I'm not saying this is better than your suggested use of @title.
> I just mean to make clear that @title *as such* is irrelevant here.

Indeed.  The current draft doesn't omit @alt in any examples except
where it's marked up as <figure><img><legend></figure>.

It's been suggested to only allow @alt to be omitted when <img> is a
child of <figure>.  I think that works just as well as my suggestion
for requiring @title.  It probably works better and in a more
backward/forward compatible way.

>
> > So if the UA falls back to @title in the case of no @alt,
>
> That's a UA bug. @title should always be available. @alt only when that is
> the author's wish, and not *instead* of @alt.

Indeed.  Both attributes can exist, and and a UA would be expected to
present both.  I never meant to imply any UA behavior other than the
example I gave.

-- 
Jon Barnett

Received on Saturday, 1 September 2007 18:50:57 UTC