- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:58:45 +0300
- To: "Steven Faulkner" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
- Cc: "public-html@w3.org WG" <public-html@w3.org>, "W3C WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, wai-liaison@w3.org
On Apr 20, 2008, at 12:25, Steven Faulkner wrote: >> There has now been a decade-long experiment with making alt a syntax >> requirement. I think this experiment shows that doing so has the >> downside of >> inducing bogus alt. When validation has downsides, as a validator >> developer, >> I want to work to remove the downsides. > > Where is the empirical data to support your assumptions? All we > currently have on both sides is anecdote and conviction. All I have is unwritten anecdotal data that convinces me of the *existence* of the phenomenon to a non-trivial extent (from observing tool output, from observing what others say when they discuss things and from observing that my own thoughts when writing tools or markup parallel what I observe others to say or do). It also seems to me that the phenomenon of people writing good alt text because a validator reminded them *exists*. My point was that quantitative data about the magnitude of different phenomena around alt and how they average out is something we don't have. -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Sunday, 20 April 2008 09:59:28 UTC