Alt Use Cases ACTION 54 (was Re: Mandatory and Important)

Hi Boris ,

> Matt Morgan-May wrote:
>>> The *entire* point of <img> is to... display an image.
>>
>> And the point of displaying an image is to _communicate information_.
>
> That's one possible point, yes.
>
> There are others (e.g. screensavers don't usually communicate much
> information but can be used to create a certain ambiance).  Heck, the
> same is true of a lot of art in general.

Art can convey a significant amount of information visually or provide
a specific sensory experience to a sighted person. But yes, purely
decorative images are visual enhancements, decorations or
embellishments that provide no function or information beyond
aesthetics to users who can view the images. They have no meaning in
themselves and do not provide page content.

Many use cases exist for alt:

Examples from the second draft of ACTION 54, ISSUE 31:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/Action54AltAttributeSecondDraft#head-f0bf2ebf9f3e1fa190974101c6b70700ff176772

Some coding techniques from the first draft of ACTION 54, ISSUE 31:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/Action54AltAttribute#head-159cd7d53e23afef01a4bd775d5d1fbea691dbdb

No examples are listed in the third draft of  ACTION 54, ISSUE 31:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/Action54AltAttributeThirdDraft
It is left to WCAG. It would let the domain experts handle their
respective domains:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAGWG):
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG):
http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG)
http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/
If there are use cases that are not addressed in their specs and
documents bring that up with WAI. Accessibility is WAI's domain. AUWG,
UAWG, WCAGWG  etc are chartered to set accessibility guidelines and
HTML WG is not.

Best Regards,
Laura

-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Thursday, 21 August 2008 23:54:03 UTC