RE: [html4all] New issue: IMG section of HTML5 draft contradicts WCAG 1 & WCAG 2 (draft)

Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> You might be able to get some people to describe some of the most
> popular photos, but there's no way that's going to scale to all
> photos on all photo galleries, so the problem of what to do with
> photos that have no useful alternative text will always exist.

Alt=""
Alt="_notsupplied" (default)
Alt="[user]'s photo #__ of __" (auto-generated)

While the first 2 of the 3 above are weak to useless, the third does provide
some useful context for non-visual users (and could be programmatically
achieved with little effort).

In all 3 instances, maintaining the alt attribute for conformance causes no
less "problems" than experienced today, while at the same time not endorsing
*NOT* providing some alternative text.  Remember, Anne wrote, "...the single
constrain I have: not finding it necessary to provide replacement text for
all those images."  Not that he could not, but that he decided not to - it
wasn't necessary.  Endorsing and allowing that mind-set is just plain wrong
IMHO.

JF

Received on Friday, 11 April 2008 21:14:55 UTC