Re: alt and authoring practices

> When the situation is that the user didn't cooperate,
> placing the  blame doesn't really help the readers of
> the generated pages.

Yes, it actually does.

The main motivation for dropping the alt requirement is that
toolmakers want to produce valid output, and therefore have an
incentive to cheat.  The cheating messes up other pages, and therefore
makes all the information unreliable.  (My personal opinion is that it
is already too late to salvage alt="" for decorations and missing alt,
because of all the existing use.)

If the validity check itself clearly places blame on the author
instead of on the tool, then this incentive is removed, or at least
greatly reduced.

-jJ