- From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net>
- Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 02:01:34 -0400
- To: public-html@w3.org
aloha, sander!
IMG is different because IMG is not a container -- my point was twofold:
1. to illustrate the need for a short and a long descriptor for static
images
2. to illustrate why a compliant UA must continue to support "alt" and
"longdesc" as part of the requirements for a conforming user agent
which is why -- at the last teleconference -- i proposed adding to the
design principles document prose to the effect that:
"Browsers should retain residual markup designed for a specific
purpose, such as accessibility. internationalization or device
independence. Simply because new technologies and superior
mechanisms have been identified, not all of them have been
implemented. Moreover, disabled users are more likely to be
users of "legacy technology" because it is the only technology
that interacts correctly with third-party assistive technologies"
but let me attempt to clarify the points i was attempting to make:
1. the ask.com thing is something that is being heavily promoted in the
u.s. -- "search intelligently" is their slogan and they boast that they
offer OnMouseOver page previews while the user is perusing the engine's
search results, so as to save the visitor time by being able to quickly
(i suppose) distinguish a site that is worth the user's time to
investigate, which isn't worth the user's time visiting, and which hits
actuallly point to a list of adds for products the user doesn't need,
nor want
i don't know the mechanics of it, or really how to describe it better,
as it has only been described to me when i've been at a mate's house
to listen to a match, and the commercial ran at half time... i've
never thought of asking someone when they are here to visit ask.com and
describe the preview pane more completely, and i only have one box with
a mouse, anyway -- the laptop which i'm typing on now is mouseless, much
to the distress of anyone who attempts to help me when my screen reader's
crashed, or another application has crashed and frozen the screen...
2. when i wrote, "you can get a thumbnail of an image in a file listing,
right?" i was asking (rhetorically, i thought) whether one of the GUI
file listing formats is to show a thumbnail of the file, so that one
can decide whether or not it is the file one wants opened...
3. the "weird icon in the tabpanel" is a reference to any generic
button-type icon in the tabpanel or toolbar area of any GUI program
whose meaning is not self-evident;
4. there are 3 things that often need to be communicated to the user
in order for that user to fully inspect and utilize a graphic,
especially one which is used as a link:
A) a terse description (currenly provided via "alt")
B) a longer fuller, rich description (currently provided by "longdesc")
it could just as easily be "hrefdesc" or the twain could simply be
renamed "terse" and "long"
C) what is this object's intended function (currently provided by
the "title" attribute)
a clear distinction between "title" and "alt" text is possible in HTML
4.01, the problem is that "title" may trump "alt" or "alt" may trump
"title", which is why there is a need for specific, rather than generic
attribute names for describing objets, just as there are in HTML 4.01
-- the problem is presenting them ALL to the user when necessary, by
default, or whatever the end user's preference at the time they are
browsing the web... when you use a "W3C Validated ML!" graphic, you're
attempting to communicate 2 things to the user: since you cannot
process this graphic, here is a terse equivalent:
alt="W3C Validated ML!" as well as the fact that a visitor can check
your handiwork for his or herself, by activating the link for which the
graphic serves as hyplink text -- both bits of information are important
to communicate to the user, and any attempt at clarity might run afoul
of the too-long-an-alt-value syndrome -- for example, about 2 years ago,
on newly created pages, i started using the following ALT text for the
W3C validation logo:
alt="W3C Validated XHTML 1.0 Strict! (check for yourself)"
but that forces an extra sentence fragment to the ALT text, which is
annoying to someone who doesn't need to or want to check it for
themselves, but who simply wants the alt text, not a bastardized alt-
title -- for most, it is sufficient to know that the page is valid --
for others, there are plenty of reasons for checking a page's self-
proclaimed conformance...
5. the fact that OBJECT lacks a short and a long descriptor is a problem
with the definition of OBJECT -- if SVG can provide a user with both a
terse and a fuller, richer description, why can't HTML? a
content-negotiation equipped OBJECT is clearly the most robust and
satisfactory solution moving forward, but i was thinking about those who
are about to be left behind, and what we could learn from the experience
of IMG and its descriptor options (or lack thereof)
6. i disagree with your reading of the HTML 4.01 TR:
quote
So until now, HTML didn't claim that, as a principle, it is necessary
to semantically indicate short and long equivalents. It only defined
that distinction for <img>. Not for <applet>, not for <area>, not for
<object>, not for <frame>, not for <iframe>, which each have only
either @alt
unquote
frames and IFRAME both allow "id" "name" and "title" values to be set, as
does AREA (for which "alt" is mandatory, according to section 13.8 of the
HTML 4.01 TR; moreover, the "long description" for a frameset or a script
is provided by what everyone's clamoring for -- a container for rich,
marked-up text, via the NOSCRIPT and NOFRAMES elements, both of which are
containers -- my early practical web advice when frames first started to
proliferate was to urge people to use the NOFRAMES element not to tell
their visitors to get a "real" browser, but to contain whatever the
contents of the navigational frame contains, plus as much of the "main"
frame's content as the site's tender/overseer deemed necessary...
besides, "applet" (like blockquote for formatting purposes) was
deprecated in HTML 4.01 and OBJECT, no matter what one may think of its
original specification or implementation, also provides rich feedback
intrinsically as a containing element and can be tersely described by
using the "title" attribute in the opening OBJECT tag... for OBJECT
the "title" attribute IS the terse descriptor, while the container
itself provides for as full and rich an alternative (or set thereof)
as could be desired... there is an excellent illustration of this
in the HTML 4.01 TR, which i need to add to the Pattern of Explicit
Associations wiki page:
<q cite="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/STRUCT/objects.html#edef-OBJECT"
In the following example, we embed several OBJECT declarations to
illustrate how alternate renderings work. A user agent will attempt
to render the first OBJECT element it can, in the following order:
(1) an Earth applet written in the Python language, (2) an MPEG
animation of the Earth, (3) a GIF image of the Earth, (4) alternate
text.
<P> <!-- First, try the Python applet -->
<OBJECT title="The Earth as seen from space"
classid="http://www.observer.mars/TheEarth.py">
<!-- Else, try the MPEG video -->
<OBJECT data="TheEarth.mpeg" type="application/mpeg">
<!-- Else, try the GIF image -->
<OBJECT data="TheEarth.gif" type="image/gif">
<!-- Else render the text -->
The <STRONG>Earth</STRONG> as seen from space.
</OBJECT>
</OBJECT>
</OBJECT>
</q title="close quote">
it would have been "nice" if the editors had used a fuller, richer
description in the container, rather than simply repeating the
contents of the "title" attribute... it is also "eye-opening" to
read section 13.8 "How to specify alternate text"
<q cite="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#h-13.8">
Attribute definitions
alt = text [CS]
For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets,
this attribute specifies alternate text. The language of the
alternate text is specified by the lang attribute.
Several non-textual elements (IMG, AREA, APPLET, and INPUT) let authors
specify alternate text to serve as content when the element cannot be
rendered normally. Specifying alternate text assists users without
graphic display terminals, users whose browsers don't support forms,
visually impaired users, those who use speech synthesizers, those who
have configured their graphical user agents not to display images, etc.
The alt attribute must be specified for the IMG and AREA elements. It
is optional for the INPUT and APPLET elements.
While alternate text may be very helpful, it must be handled with care.
Authors should observe the following guidelines:
* Do not specify irrelevant alternate text when including images
intended to format a page, for instance, alt="red ball" would
be inappropriate for an image that adds a red ball for
decorating a heading or paragraph. In such cases, the alternate
text should be the empty string (""). Authors are in any case
advised to avoid using images to format pages; style sheets
should be used instead.
* Do not specify meaningless alternate text (e.g., "dummy text").
Not only will this frustrate users, it will slow down user agents
that must convert text to speech or braille output.
Implementors should consult the section on accessibility for information
about how to handle cases of omitted alternate text.
</q title="end quote">
[sidenote: the section on accessibility alluded to above is located at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#accessibility
which contains 4 links, all of which link to WAI resources...]
the first bullet point should have formally deprecated the use of
images to format pages in favor of stylesheets; also, the character
entity for the paragraph sign could have been used as alt text in the
HTML 4.01 example; as for red balls, i once presented a paper as part
of a symposium on the role of the philosopher in resistance and
rebellion at kent state university, a topic and a conference which
had absolutely nothing to do with accessibility... nevertheless,
over the lunch break after i had presented my paper, the subject of
do you slash can you use the internet or web inevitably came up, and
i gave an aural equivalent of what closely resembled the later WAI
QuickTip cards, addressing the biggest barriers and the simplest
solutions, and not long after the conference, i was contacted via email
by one of the professors i had met over lunch, who maintained a site
which contained a resource listing which currently active philosophers
believe that artificial intelligence can truly exist, asking me to check
her site, as she had just done a "major accessibility overhaul"... to
illustrate the sentiments of each philosopher, she had used red balls
to indicate anti-AI philosophers, and blue balls to indicate those who
were pro-AI -- the reason i knew she had used red and blue balls, is
that she had used "red ball" and "blue ball" as alt text, resulting in
a page full of philosophers with red and blue balls...
gregory.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author
of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum -- whereby he was pleased
to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The
dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito
sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close
an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------- Original Message -----------
From: Sander Tekelenburg <st@isoc.nl>
To: public-html@w3.org
Sent: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 13:01:29 +0200
Subject: Re: More about <alt>
> At 01:07 -0400 UTC, on 2007-09-05, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
>
> > if IMG is preserved as an empty container for "backwards
compatibility",
> > then it is ESSENTIAL that the alt and longdesc attributes be retained
>
> Why exactly?
>
> > [...] if IMG is deprecated, UAs will STILL
> > have to support/enable exposure of alt
>
> Indeed. As they need to support all (well, most) other pre-HTML5
> content.
>
> > and provide a configurable method
> > for presentation to the user
>
> I can't follow. To configure what?
>
> > AND the replacement element or elements,
> > MUST have a short descriptor and a long descriptor form
>
> Why exactly?
>
> [...]
>
> > look at it this way, and i do mean visualize this:
> >
> > you can get a site preview through a MouseOver or other hover event on
> > ask.com, right?
>
> Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. A "site preview" of
> what, by hovering over what? (Maybe this is some UA-specific
> feauture of ask.com? I've never used that site before.)
>
> > you can get a thumbnail of an image in a file listing,
> > right?
>
> Same thing. I can't follow.
>
> > you can get an explanation of that weird icon in the tabpanel
> > through a hover event
>
> Sorry, more of the same confusion again :) What "tabpanel"?
>
> FWIW, the only mouse hover effects I get on ask.com is when I do
> an image search, for each found image there is a "source" link.
> If I mouse hover over that, I get a CSS-dependant tooltip
> simulation. (I'm guessing it says "source" -- they're forcing me
> to consume a dutch version of the site.)
>
> [...]
>
> > users don't always need or want to have everything explained in
detail,
> > but if i land, as i did in an earlier thread, on a short descriptor
> > such as:
> >
> > "Snapshot of a KDE Desktop"
> >
> > might i not want a description of a KDE desktop's default GUI "look
> > and feel" so that i can communicate with sighted technical support,
let
> > alone colleagues and assistive technology?
>
> Understood. But why exactly does that mean that HTML must define
> a distinction between short and long descriptions? In what sense
> does the example I posted in
> <http://www.w3.org/mid/p06240688c303bb702138@%5B192.168.0.101%5D>,
using two <alt> elements for the same <img>, one providing a short and
the other a long description, each indicated as such by the author
through @title, not suffice?
>
> I'm not convinced it is not needed. But I think we should be
> sure that it is needed.
>
> I don't think the mere fact that both @alt and @longdesc exist
demonstrates
> that need. After all, the distinction exists *only* for <img>.
> Not for <DEFANGED_object>. So until now, HTML didn't claim that,
> as a principle, it is necessary to semantically indicate short
> and long equivalents. It only defined that distinction for
> <img>. Not for <DEFANGED_applet>, not for <area>, not for
> <DEFANGED_object>, not for <DEFANGED_frame>, not for
> <DEFANGED_iframe>, which each have only either @alt or @longdesc
> in HTML 4.01.
>
> [...]
>
> > sometimes a glance or a signpost is sufficient, and sometimes -- more
> > times than most would admit/think -- it is necessary to know in detail
> > the contents of a graphical component of a document instance; it's
> > like driving: sometimes the signs are sufficient, sometimes you need
> > a map, and sometimes, you just need to pull over and ask someone...
>
> Completeley understood. And actually, I think <alt> could serve
> this better, because it would allow for more than just 1 short
> and 1 long textual equivalent. It would allow for an audio
> equivalent as well. And a tabular one. Etc.
>
> --
> Sander Tekelenburg
> The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>
------- End of Original Message -------
Received on Saturday, 8 September 2007 06:01:42 UTC