- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 16:12:24 -0700
- To: Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
- Cc: "public-html@w3.org" <public-html@w3.org>, W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>, wai-liaison@w3.org, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>, "Michael(tm) Smith" <mike@w3.org>
- Message-Id: <642E14C3-A9B4-4BBE-A774-FDCBB5D273A1@apple.com>
Hi Steve, On May 8, 2008, at 8:28 AM, Steven Faulkner wrote: > > Dear HTML WG members, > > The first draft of our rewrite of major sections of 3.12.2 "The img > element" in the HTML5 draft is now available: > > http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/misc/uc/ Thanks for writing up a proposal. This proposal does not cover the use case where HTML generated by a tool does not have a textual alternative available. Examples include: - Dragging a photo into a WYSIWYG mail program's composer (Mail programs do not normally prompt for a description and doing so would be confusing to users) - Bulk upload of photographs to a photo sharing site, where the photographer is unwilling to put in the effort to individually describe each one - A script that scrapes images from other sources that lack text alternatives, and generate html These would all be covered by "Images of Pictures" but the required description is not available. Thus, the proposal does not cover all the use cases handled by the current spec language. It also requires redundant text in many cases where the current spec would call for empty alt. For example: <p id="piedescription">According to a study covering several billion pages, about 62% of documents on the Web in 2007 triggered the Quirks rendering mode of Web browsers, about 30% triggered the Almost Standards mode, and about 9% triggered the Standards mode.</p> <p><img src="rendering-mode-pie-chart.png" alt="The majority of documents triggered quirksmode." aria-describedby="piedescription"></p> Is there any reason to believe that redundant text description of an image that recapitulates the text is helpful, rather than harmful, to users who use textual alternatives? After all, "The majority of documents triggered quirksmode" is just a restatement of "62% of documents on the Web in 2007 triggered the Quirks rendering mode of Web browsers". Furthermore, aria-describedby would link the image to a long description, thus possibly leading the screen reader user to hear the same information yet a third time. Is there reason to believe that screen reader users like to hear things two or three times? I have not done any studies but this is surprising to my intuition. I would have concluded that using alt="" to present the screen reader user (or other users of aural or text- only media) with the information only once is best. It may be that this surprising conclusion is correct but I would like to hear some justification. Regards, Maciej
Received on Sunday, 11 May 2008 23:13:17 UTC