Re: Is Flickr an Edge Case? (was Re: HTML Action Item 54)

Seems like either alt="" or absent altogether is the best solution
technically.
Look, there's no chance that browsers will not display images that are
perfectly valid other than their lack of @alt.  Therefore, any conformance
rule stating that @alt is required is silly.  Furthermore, just because
someone can access my photos on Flickr doesn't mean they're the intended
audience. They're my photos.  I'm uploading them there first and foremost
for myself and my friends and family.  And I'm not going to spend a week
laboriously annotating 3000 photos for zero (or at best, negligible) benefit
to me or my intended audience.

It just won't happen; you can't expect anyone to spend that level of time on
something like that.  Instead, they'll set a default of something like "My
vacation in Maui" that will apply to every picture.  And if they really
don't care, it will be meaningless text, like alt="bla".

-Matt

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 5:56 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:

>
> I personally prefer the noalt attribute, although it technically "leaves
> out the alt". I think it has a small advantage (harder to accidentally
> forget to indicate anything about the status of the image), but also some
> disadvantages. Which choice is best should be decided on technical merits,
> not whether the three letters A-L-T appear in that order, as if that were
> some sort of magical talisman automatically granting accessibility.
>