Re: Flickr and alt

Justin James 2008-08-20 07.24:

>> Leif Halvard Silli Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:12 PM
   [ ... @role ...]
> The reason why I suggest that we allow it to be omitted, is
> because it is a pretty large burden to impose on HTML authors


First time I heard about @role, I was negative ... But it sunk in.

> to ask them to try to categorize every tag they use into the
> @role system. Creating a role called "unspecified", and
> spec'ing it so that anything where @role is omitted or equal to
> empty string is equivalent to @role=unspecified  [...]


Unspecified role gives unspecific validation ...


> One contributing factor in why I feel this way, is that I am of
> the opinion that @role should be available on nearly every
> element in the body of an HTML document.

So that all would default to role=undefined, you mean. OK.

>> Some tryouts for the last question: If the default value was

     [...]

>> (4) role="private-undefined" (the name of the default role
>> should seem unfitting for "public" pages) => validator
>> announces

>> 

>> [...] (c) that such a value is incorrect for pages
>> [...] in need of a measure of universal access and
>> accessibility [ .. etc ..]

> 
> I tend to favor a behavior of missing/empty/"unspecified" @role
> value to behave consistently with Karl's proposal from
> yesterday (at least in regards to @alt), of "@alt is a
> mandatory attribute, even if it is simply empty, see WCAG for
> accessibility information". It is simply the best proposal I
> have seen on the subject, despite the hundreds of emails on the
> topic. That being said, your option #4 is darned close to what
> I would expect and want, and I suspect it's what you favor too,
> given the detail you give it in your description. I do not
> think the two ideas are incompatible, and indeed, I think that
> they complement each other extraordinarily well!


Perhaps I should change its name to role=unspecified. ;-)

>> Over all, @role would open many new possibilities for better 
>> validation services:
>> 

>> Repeated alt could trigger a response. [...] Some loopholes
>> could become narrower. [...] @Role would allow the validator
>> to apply "heuristics". [...]


> I agree 100%! I think that @role not only opens up great things
> for validation, but also for search engines and any other
> "Semantic Web"-consuming/parsing application. But I also think
> it's way too much to ask of many (if not most) HTML authors to
> always use it, let alone use it correctly (much like @alt,
> sadly).

If we keep the option of role=unspefified, then we would get at 
least two levels of validation. And that might be fine.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Wednesday, 20 August 2008 16:07:50 UTC