- From: Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:15:43 -0400
- To: "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: "Al Gilman" <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>, "W3C WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, "public html for all" <list@html4all.org>, "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On 4/15/08, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote: > On Tue, 15 Apr 2008, Al Gilman wrote: > > In terms of meeting the HTML5 performance goals of minimizing > > disruption, disruption to the accessibility checking community has to be > > included as relevant. Here, leaving @alt as a required attribute and > > @alt="" as the code for "suitable to ignore" has performance benefits in > > terms of not disrupting incumbent practice. But this has to be weighed > > against the potential benefits of change, and the steps taken to > > mitigate the negative effects of change. > The problem is that there are _three_ states, not two: > 1. Image is not important. (alt="") > 2. Image is important, alternative text is available. (alt="...") > 3. Image is important, alternative text is not available. > Case 3 is the one we are discussing. Cases 1 and 2 are well understood and > nobody is suggesting changing them. Some people are indeed suggesting changing case 1 (e.g., alt=_decorative), in part because case 3 often gets treated that way by default. An explicit token would allow me to distinguish cases 1 and 3 in my own writing. This in turn *should* allow me to recognize when I can actually believe case 1 on other people's pages. (On the other hand, it is also possible that some editors would just change the default for all images to _decorative, and I would be no better off.) -jJ
Received on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 21:16:16 UTC