Re: New issue: IMG section of HTML5 draft contradicts WCAG 1 & WCAG 2 (draft)

On Apr 11, 2008, at 11:23, Steven Faulkner wrote:
> 5.  Conclusion:  barring the introduction of new, good
> reasons for a change, the failure of the HTML5 draft to make
> @alt on <img> an across-the-board requirement (even if sometimes
> it has the value of &quot;&quot;) is a bug.


Hixie's email on the matter and my previous email(s) on the matter  
gave a reason:

A piece of software gets images from somewhere and puts them  
automatically out on the Web. What should the developer of that piece  
of software program it to do when an image arrives from whatever pipe  
they arrive from without alternative text? How do you require a  
program to emit something it simply doesn't have without faking it  
with junk?

(Note: Saying that the program should block until human intervention  
won't be a viable approach. A product that did that would only be  
supplanted by products that don't. Saying that such products should be  
programmed to output invalid HTML isn't a viable answer, either.  
Saying that the program should emit alt='' would lose information  
about lack of data vs. marking the image as decorative.)

Should I conclude that you don't count the reason as a good reason?

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Friday, 11 April 2008 09:30:05 UTC