- From: Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 15:18:38 -0400
- To: "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
- Cc: Smylers@stripey.com
Olivier GENDRIN reminded us of http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#conformance-claims and Smylers wrote: > That has two levels of conformance, with a 'partial > conformance' exception for included external content. > Are you suggesting something similar for HTML 5? Yes; there has been resistance in the past to multiple levels of conformance, but this does provide a pathway. > 2 This webpage completely conforms to the > HTML 5 standard. > 1 This webpage conforms to the HTML 5 standard > except that it includes unknown images from > external sources for which we are unable to > provide alterternative text. > Except that ... [various reformulations that eventually end up suggesting alt-less is good enough in general, and a fully conforming with-alt document is above and beyond.] We do not want accessibility to become an above-and-beyond that must be called out separately. The longer and non-default formulation should be used for the exceptional case, which should be the less accessible. "This webpage conforms to the HTML 5 standard except that ..." is precisely the formulation to use, and "... it includes images for which the author has failed to provide alt attributes." is a good example, which might be worth formalizing. (Maybe even better than the <font> for WYSIWYG, since it is clearly an author fix instead of a tool fix.) And note that this conformance claim is orthogonal to whether alt should always be required, or should become optional under certain circumstances, such as when a (possibly implied) aria-describedby provides the information in another manner. -jJ
Received on Sunday, 4 May 2008 19:19:18 UTC