- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:09:29 +0100
- To: "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>, "James Craig" <jcraig@apple.com>
- Cc: "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>, "Maciej Stachowiak" <mjs@apple.com>, public-html@w3.org
On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:56:48 +0100, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org> wrote: > > On Fri, 2009-02-06 at 12:33 -0800, James Craig wrote: >> On Feb 6, 2009, at 12:15 PM, Ian Hickson wrote: >> >> > I've added a note that says: >> > >> > In a conforming document, the absence of the alt attribute indicates >> > that the image is a key part of the content but that a textual >> > replacement for the image was not available when the image was >> > generated. >> > >> > Does that help? >> >> That's perfect. Thank you. > > Did we just achieve consensus between the HTML and the PFWG > on ISSUE-31 missing-alt? > > i.e. James, are you pretty sure the rest of the PF WG agrees > with you? > > Matt May, Chaals, etc. is Ian's position close enough > to your own? It works for me. Do we have 3 independent parties > in agreement, I wonder? I think we are close, but not there yet. I have a couple of real disagreements with the current draft, towards the end of the section on alternatives[1]: Section 4.8.2.1.11 "An image in an e-mail or document intended for a specific person who is known to be able to view images" seems to me mildly harmful. Specifically, it appears to legitimate claims of the kind "all our customers can see, so we don't need to worry", something that causes a huge umber of problems in ensuring accessibility where it is in fact necessary. An example given a decade ago was about a driving school, where someone asked what the point of providing alt was. And someone pointed out that there are many people who 1. Are blind 2. Weren't always, and learned to drive 3. Have children who ask them for help when learning to understand the road rules. (Possibly even more who meet condition 1 and 2 but instead of meeting 3 want to offer unsolicited advice on everything including driving - but that's not relevant to the topic). I realise that this is a somewhat political / use-based argument, byut my personal experience suggests that removing this section would do no real harm and some small good. 4.8.2.1.13 Guidance for markup generators also seems problematic. Its suggestion that tools might simply assume that things are decorative and use alt="" flies in the face of both ATAG 1 [2] and the current draft of ATAG 2 [3], both documents designed specifically to address this issue for the relevant audience. The section's treatment of what to do when an image represents a link is, IMHO, an over-simplification of the guidance in ATAG that is also in conflict for some cases with what that specification actually says. If the former section were removed, and the latter section rewritten to follow what ATAG says (and even better, refer to it directly), then I believe the current draft and those modifications would resolve ISSUE-30. (Whereas the current draft and some other set of odifications may or may not, IMHO). A more minor quibble that I think is editorial is with "don't do this" example of bad practice given in Section 4.8.2.1.2 A phrase or paragraph with an alternative graphical representation: charts, diagrams, graphs, maps, illustrations" - rather than using the current text, I would suggest something like "Photo of white house with boarded door" - and perhaps a note that such text *would* be reasonable as a title *in addition* to the suggested alt. Likewise I have editorial quibbles with the allegedly bad example in Section 4.8.2.1.9 "A key part of the content" where it suggests that "The first of ten cards in the Rorshach test" is bad alt text. Assuming some resolution to ISSUE-30 allows for a reference to a further description that is not included in the main flow of text, and a page whose assumed audience is people who know what the Rorshach test is, or describes it, the specifics of the picture is not necessarily relevant and the example *may* be perfectly reasonable. As demonstrated by the fact that I can have a meaningful discussion about it by email, even though I have no idea what it actually looks like because I didn't properly read the description included in the proposed good example. Which is pne reason why as far as I am concerned the current does *not* resolve ISSUE-30 - longdesc and whether it is such a great idea to remove it from HTML. There are some other examples given in this section of the draft, such as descriptions of complex images, where the ability to refer to a standalone resource as a description of a complex image would facilitate re-use of the image across different pages for users and authors, and would facilitate recognition of the image for both authoring tools and assistive technologies. Likewise, the use of a title attribute to describe another section in the same document as the relevant text is helpful in a monolingual world, but even more helpful is the ability to provide a machine-readable pointer so the information can be harvested. (I doubt Google would harvest it automatically due to web spamming problems, but that is not relevant to, for example, an enterprise website management system). However, that has a seperate issue number so that it can be resolved another day. > (FWIW, editorially, I like the suggestion of > 3 Feb 2009 08:47:11 +0200 to include the two by three table) > [1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#alt [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-no-default-alt [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-ATAG20-20081124/#principle-support-author checkpoint B.2.4.3 -- Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
Received on Thursday, 12 February 2009 09:10:24 UTC