What <object> represents in different views (detailed review of Semantics)

(This is part of my detailed review of the Semantics and structure of HTML  
elements section.)

The spec says about <object>:

    In the absence of other factors (such as style sheets), user agents
    must show the user what the object element represents. Thus, the
    contents of object elements act as fallback content, to be used only
    when referenced resources can't be shown (e.g. because it returned a
    404 error). This allows multiple object elements to be nested inside
    each other, targeting multiple user agents with different capabilities,
    with the user agent picking the best one it supports.

However, what about the case where the UA supports the primary format but  
it can't be "shown" in a particular view (e.g. an image when reading the  
document aloud)? Shouldn't the fallback be used in such cases, just like  
alt="" would be used for <img>?

I haven't thought much about this yet or how it's supposed to work,  
though. See this comment:

    http://juicystudio.com/article/html5-image-element-no-alt.php#comment19

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software

Received on Saturday, 1 September 2007 19:10:59 UTC