- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:58:50 +0200
- To: HTML4All <list@html4all.org>
- Cc: wai-xtech@w3.org, "Al Gilman" <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>, "Michael(tm) Smith" <mike@w3.org>, "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>, "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:06:48 +0200, Philip TAYLOR
<Philip-and-LeKhanh@royal-tunbridge-wells.org> wrote:
> Henri Sivonen wrote:
>
>> Saying that the program should emit alt='' would lose information
>> about lack of data vs. marking the image as decorative.)
>
> Why could the program not emit something along the lines of
>
> 'alt="<no ALT text available>"'
It could. But it is a bad idea because
1. Because that does not mean anything in most langauges of the world.
2. Because you are unlikely to come up with a complete text string that
people always emit correctly, and get it implemented through the various
tool chains in use, with anything like the same efficiency as working out
what the lack of an alt attribute means.
3. Because it isn't actually a terribly helpful statement for a person to
hear multiple times.
4. It means that all legacy testing systems will have to be rebuilt to
ensure that they recognise this magic string as being equivalent to not
having any alt attribute.
cheers
Chaals
--
Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group
je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
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Received on Friday, 11 April 2008 11:59:54 UTC