Re: a question about alt

Hi Thomas, sorry for not responding earlier, I missed you reply.
My suggestion is based upon the understanding that not adding a new
attribute (noalt) is preferable to adding a new attribute, but I agree
that including both noalt and alt="" may be a solution to the issue of
backwards compatibility.


On 06/09/2007, Thomas Broyer <t.broyer@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 2007/9/6, Steve Faulkner:
> > James wrote:
> > >Distinguishing the cases alt="" and alt=" " would make it very easy to
> > >typo a meaningfully-different value and very hard to spot the mistake.
> > >If such an explicit indicator is desirable, using alt="" and noalt
> seems
> > >like a better solution.
> >
> > I understand what you are saying. the reason I have suggested this is
> that a
> > new attribute would not be backwards compatible with assistive
> technology.
> > The alt=" " suggestion is treated by the assistive tech i have tested it
> > with, the same way as alt="" (the image is ignored with default
> settings).
>
> I'm not sure I understand (or rather, I'm sure I don't understand),
> but wouldn't:
>    <img alt=" " ...> (your proposal)
> be equivalent to:
>    <img alt="" noalt ...>
> wrt backwards compatibility?
>
> noalt here meaning "there is no applicable textual alternate" (i.e.
> similar to not using the alt attribute at all in the current draft).
>
> --
> Thomas Broyer
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

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