- From: Andrew Sidwell <w3c@andrewsidwell.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 13:53:06 +0100
- 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
I have reservations about adding to this thread, but so it goes... (I fear I'm making the same point Dave Singer rather excellently made.) Steven Faulkner wrote: > dear maciej, > >> It is not a matter of opinion. Making a use-case non-conforming is by > definition not handling it for purposes of document conformance. It > may be a >conscious choice to reject a use case, but it is not > support. > > you assume without justification, that it is desirable or right to > accommodate use cases that result in important data and/or data > relationships not being provided. i don't subscribe to this. I would be happy if someone (or several someones) in favour of making alt mandatory in all cases would answer very simply: How does a blind photographer mark up a photo, which is known to be critical content, but which she herself cannot describe? Is it: <img src="photo"> <img src="photo" alt="Photo"> <img src="photo" alt="Exposure 2s, f/12"> or something else? Furthermore, should a blind photographer who cannot provide alt text be able to author conforming HTML5? (I ask this without prejudice; maybe the answer should be no.) This is essentially what "handling the use case" would consist of. Guidance needs to be given in cases like these-- "cases that result in important data and/or data relationships not being provided", whether you want to accommodate them within the spec or not. Why? Because there *is* content with no textual alternative and there will be whether you say there should be or not. The interesting question is not "should alt be mandatory?" but "how do you mark up critical content with no known alt text?". Saying "but alt text should be available" does not change the fact that sometimes, it is not. With me? Just because you set up your goalposts such that the interesting question is outside them does not remove the question. As a photographer, I do not have the time or the money to pay someone else to have the time to provide anything resembling alternate text for 99% of my photos. I am quite willing to produce non-conforming HTML5 if alt was to became mandatory in all cases, but the question remains-- how should I mark up the photos I don't have the resources to provide alt text for whilst still saying that they are critical content? (Call me someone with disregard for disabilities if you like, but I see putting photos online for those who can view them analogously to showing my friends prints of photos in real life. IRL I don't write alternate text for every print I make in case someone who can't adequately view the photo wants to know what it's about, and so I don't expect to do the same online. I would be happy to describe a photo in such an instance, but it's something I would do on-the-fly, and not at upload-time/print-time.) Andrew Sidwell
Received on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 12:53:47 UTC