- From: Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>
- Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 22:23:49 +0000
- To: "HTML Working Group <public-html@w3.org>" <public-html@w3.org>
On May 3, 2008, at 2:37 PM, Smylers wrote: >> The initial name of the photo is automatically generated by iPhoto or >> my camera and usually in the form IMG_####.jpg. This means the alt >> attribute would look like this: ‘alt='view image "IMG_1234" >> fullsize”. > > But that isn't alternative to being able to see the photo. > > Also it doesn't provide a browser with any additional information; the > filename is already in the href of the link -- so a browser's > heuristics > could choose to show that to the user even without it being set in the > alt attribute. > > So I'm not sure how the author doing that is any better for image-less > users than omitting the alt attribute entirely. > > Image-less browsers can do at least as well by themselves, possibly > better. This I think is a bit of a technical misunderstanding that needs clarification. Including ‘view image "IMG_1234"’ in the alt attribute is not remotely the same thing as omitting the alt attribute. First, a UA could read the filenames for every photo on the page. However, that's a very different user experience than reading the few times an author includes that alt text in the document. In the latter case, it's now at the author's discretion which content gets read to the user. Secondly, the UA cannot easily determine that it should add the ‘view image’ in front of the filename of each graphic. Thirdly, in this case the authoring tool is drawing the alt text not from the graphic filename (as you assumed), but from the graphic files metadata title. In this way, every title the author provides is immediately made use of by the authoring too. So to underscore this again. This means there is nothing cumbersome or burdensome in the requirement to include alt text (at least not in any of the examples provided so far). On the other hand, it may be cumbersome for the author to provide descriptive titles and description metadata for every photo in a bulk upload, however, this debate is not about requiring authors or authoring tools to do so. So to again clear up this confusion, the required alt attribute creates no cumbersome work for authors. The cumbersome work for authors is instead in the inclusion of optional longdesc and media file metadata. Take care, Rob
Received on Saturday, 3 May 2008 22:24:32 UTC