Re: One more thought about requiring the alt to add to the pile

I have not seen jaws ignoring alt="" in fact, it reports some blather as 
though there was no alt.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven Faulkner" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
To: "Henri Sivonen" <hsivonen@iki.fi>
Cc: <public-html@w3.org>; "W3C WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>; 
<wai-liaison@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 5:25 AM
Subject: Re: One more thought about requiring the alt to add to the pile



hi henri,

>  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.

>  A modal non-visual UI may be easier to invent, but in a non-visual UI it 
> is
> also harder to tell what mode you are trapped in, so I don't think it is
> necessarily OK to introduce more modality even if there already is some. 
> It
> appears that VoiceOver tries to avoid modality (apart from the VO key 
> lock)
> just like visual Apple user interfaces.

As far as AT is concerned we are not comparing like with like.
the windows and mac OS systems present different challenges for AT to 
overcome.
I do  not understand the reason for presence of modal UIs in windows
AT, but not in voiceover.

my suggestion was not to add another mode as both window eys and jaws
(for example) have the option available already to announce all
graphics, but currently this setting still ignores <img alt="">,
so what I am suggesting is that the vendors merely change the
functionality for this option so that alt="" is reported.

regards
stevef
On 20/04/2008, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
> On Apr 18, 2008, at 11:07, Steven Faulkner wrote:
>
>
> >
> > > No. Now you are being so dogmatic about the alt attribute being there
> > > that you are willing to suggest modal UI to work around it. That's
> > > bad.
> > >
> > >
> > There is dogma on both sides of the debate, you  appear more dogmatic
> > about the idea of alt as optional, than I am to it being required, I
> > have publically stated that I am as yet unconvinced of the
> > desirability of a required alt. There is obviuosly no doubt in your
> > mind.
> >
>
>  I can be persuaded with empirical data.
>
>  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.
>
>  It may be that there's a greater upside and that a situation that 
> polarizes
> results but has a greater upside is better even if it also moves the
> downside further from neutrality. However, absent data about this, I think
> it is reasonable to default to removing the downside.
>
>  Also, I think the Image Review feature I have implemented in Validator.nu
> works better than merely flagging missing alt as a validation error would
> for validator users who want to maximize an accessibility measure. It
> remains to be seen how it affects validator users who don't care about an
> accessibility measure and are seeking to maximize a syntactic correctness
> measure.
>
>  In general, if you want people to maximize function f(), it is safer to
> tell them to do so than to tell them to maximize a more appealing function
> g() and then try to build an artificial correlation between the two. 
> Because
> then people are really maximizing g() and if your artificial correlation
> setup isn't working, well, oops. So if your agenda is accessibility, the
> advocacy should be "accessibility, accessibility"--not "validity, 
> validity"
> with an added attempt to tie them together.
>
>
> > There already are  "modal UI's" for most aspects of screen readers
> > content presentation, i think it is the nature of  presenting visual
> > UI's non visually or non linear content linearly.
> >
>
>  A modal non-visual UI may be easier to invent, but in a non-visual UI it 
> is
> also harder to tell what mode you are trapped in, so I don't think it is
> necessarily OK to introduce more modality even if there already is some. 
> It
> appears that VoiceOver tries to avoid modality (apart from the VO key 
> lock)
> just like visual Apple user interfaces.
>
>  --
>  Henri Sivonen
>  hsivonen@iki.fi
>  http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
Web Accessibility Toolbar -
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html

Received on Sunday, 20 April 2008 11:06:18 UTC