Re: Investigating the proposed alt attribute recommendations in HTML 5

At 02:06 +0200 UTC, on 2007-09-03, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

> On 2007-09-01 17:34:18 +0200 Sander Tekelenburg <st@isoc.nl> wrote:
>> At 20:29 +0200 UTC, on 2007-08-31, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

[...]

> What I meant is that the relationship - or lack there of - between ALT and
>TITLE should be discussed in the spec. What goes into ALT and what goes into
>TITLE is a real issue for many - just as it has been said in our debate.

Hm... yes, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to say something about the different
meanings of @alt and @title, in the section that already says that UAs must
present them differently.

[...]

> I think that just as the draft has examples of how to use or not use ALT,
>the draft should also show samples of how to use and how to not use TITLE
>versus ALT. For example, one could show the FLAG example, <img
>alt="vietnamese" title="language" src="VietnameseFlag.gif"> etc.

Actually, that example should include <a @hreflang=>. (In which case I'm not
sure that the <img>'s title="language" would actually be appropriate still.)

[...]

>> Did we get Joshue's test results already? I missed that :( Where can they be
>> found?
>
> Probably we task past each others, but here it is:
><http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/articles/altinhtml5.html>

I was thinking of <http://www.w3.org/mid/46D446F7.2050908@cfit.ie> ;)

[...]

> (Btw, outside this forum some of us discussed if and audiofile could be the
>alternative content of the IMG file - perhaps through content negotiaion.)

Yeah, I can imagine that an audio equivalent of an image could make sense.
Especially for long descriptions. Perhaps also to avoid the limitations of
aural CSS support in current UAs. But content negotiation seems to
complicated for that to me. (If only because most authors probably don't know
how to do that.) It would be very easy to author with the proposed <alt>
element though.

[...]

>>> For myself, 'context' helped me understand better. Title can tell about the
>>> authors intent. A good TITLE therefore, can help make the ALT text shorter.
>>
>> Well, yes, but the same applies to all other content that relates to a
>> non-text object. There is nothing special about @title where equivalents are
>> concerned.
>
> I do not understand you quite here.

I mean that "good" text surrounding an image (in <p>, <legend>, etc.) can
also help make the alt text shorter (and more importantly, easier to author).
I don't think @title is a special case.


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

Received on Monday, 3 September 2007 16:09:35 UTC