Re: feedback requested on WAI CG Consensus Resolutions on Text alternatives in HTML 5 document

On Aug 20, 2009, at 15:06, Jan Richards wrote:

> Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> Given enough rope, Web authors do the wildest things for the  
>> craziest reasons. However, here's a plausible non-crazy failure  
>> scenario:
>> Author A creates a document using an authoring tool and fails to  
>> make the document accessible. The authoring tool inserts the  
>> "ignore" marker. Later, author B in author A's organization  
>> addresses the problem that the document is inaccessible. Author B  
>> adds sensible alt text using a text editor. While author B has read  
>> introductions to Web accessibility to know about alt, author B  
>> isn't aware of the finer points of HTML syntax and fails to remove  
>> the "ignore" marker. Now the document is still inaccessible in UAs  
>> that honor the "ignore" marker. Author B could even test the  
>> document in older UAs without noticing the problem.
>
> I see. Perhaps this could be addressed somewhat by advising  
> authoring tools to automatically undo the "missing" mechanism if an  
> author edits the @alt value.

That author B uses a text editor and not an HTML-aware authoring tool  
is a key part of the scenario. I think it's a realistic key part.

The way to mitigate this is to make only validators and authoring  
tools sensitive to the "missing" marker and not to make browsers/AT  
sensitive to it at all.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/