Re: Another summary of alt="" issues and why the spec says what it says

John Foliot wrote:
> Let's look at this.  The text reads: "When it is possible for alternative
> text to be provided..." - first of all, the circumstances cited are tainted:
> I *CANNOT* add alt text to my Flickr images today because the interface does
> not allow me.

No-one is defending Flickr's failure to allow alt text to be supplied by 
its users, but whether appropriate UI is provided or not is outside the 
domain of HTML5's syntactic requirements.  That is the domain of the 
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines.

As far as HTML5's requirements are concerned, the only question is 
whether or not suitable alt text is available.  It doesn't matter 
whether it's not available due to the authoring tools failure to provide 
suitable UI, or because the author just failed to provide it.  However, 
allowing alt to be omitted in such cases does not excuse the authoring 
tool's failure to provide suitable UI.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Thursday, 17 April 2008 09:57:29 UTC