Re: alt and authoring practices

Thisis where alt="" comes in and we use title and use the title of the  
painting or caption or whatever.  If you like, you cn put the title of  
the painting in the alt.  You are thinking description.  In the case  
of a medium refering to a medium for instance, audio, photo, what you  
need is reference information and description is done elsewhere.  Alt  
is an art as much as it is a science.

On Apr 21, 2008, at 3:06 AM, Dave Singer wrote:


At 12:59  -0400 16/04/08, David Poehlman wrote:
> replace not describe.

I know that.  but what constitutes a workable replacement depends on  
the meaning of the image in the context of the page.  my last example  
was actually partly serious.  If I was doing a seminar for a bunch of  
well-educated jungian mythology specialists, and the page said "the  
seminar will focus on the following painting", I may well need quite  
an extensive description of the image to give those unable to see it  
an equal understanding of the content.

as I say, "how well-thought-out is the alt string" and "what is the  
alt string" are a difficult pair of questions to combine and get one  
answer.

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dave Singer" <singer@apple.com>
> To: "Anne van Kesteren" <annevk@opera.com>; "Steven Faulkner"
> <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
> Cc: "James Graham" <jg307@cam.ac.uk>; <public-html@w3.org>;
> <wai-xtech@w3.org>; <wai-liaison@w3.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 12:43 PM
> Subject: Re: alt and authoring practices
>
>
>
> At 13:29  +0200 16/04/08, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>> On Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:23:06 +0200, Steven Faulkner
>> <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I don't quite follow the logic, but that is probably due to my
>>> incapacity to understand, but I am pretty sure you are making a
>>> worthwhile point and will cogitate on it further.
>>>
>>>> With nobody having data of usage on the Web the position of the
>>>> editor seems more reasonable to me.
>>>
>>> And that is your prerogative as a member of the working group, I
>>> myself do not place faith in the editor as being all seeing and all
>>> knowing in the absence of data.
>>
>> If my reasoning is correct the position of the editor is supported
>> by logic which is why his point seems more correct to me. Not
>> because he's the editor.
>>
>> (You assume a minority case is likely to occur more often and the
>> editor assumes a majority case is likely to occur more often.)
>
> I do wonder if we are trying to pack too much into one attribute.
> Really, this is brainstorming and may be a bad idea, but are we
> trying to pack "what is the alt string" and "how trustworthy is the
> alt string" into the same attribute, when it can't be done?  the rest
> is somewhat in jest...
>
> maybe we need a second attribute alt-trust-level:
>
> 0   the string is empty or may as well be, or missing:  it's worthless
> 5   the string contains facts even a stupid program could work out
> from the image itself (e.g. width and height)
> 10 the string contains facts that were deduced automatically with
> some effort from the image itself
> 15 the string contains automatically collected ancillary data not
> found in the image (e.g. time of capture, camera)
> 20 the string contains human-entered data of a basic descriptive  
> nature
> 25 the string contains a rather detailed description of the image
> 30 the string contains an analysis of the meaning of the picture as
> well as its description
> 100 the string is a doctoral thesis, analyzing the image from every
> possible direction, including references to mythological, symbolical
> and historical references, history of the place/people shown,
> analysis of their health, state of mind, an aesthetic analysis of the
> composition, an analysis of the technical competence, and so on
>
> i'm guessing some people here think everyone should achieve level  
> 20.  :-)
>
> by the way, can one provide alt strings in multiple languages and/or
> scripts?  what would happen if someone tried level 100?
> --
> David Singer
> Apple/QuickTime


-- 
David Singer
Apple/QuickTime



-- 
Jonnie Appleseed
with his
Hands-On Technolog(eye)s
reducing technology's disabilities
one byte at a time

Received on Monday, 21 April 2008 14:52:56 UTC