- From: Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:22:54 -0600
- To: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>
- Cc: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, Matt May <mattmay@adobe.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, public-html-a11y@w3.org
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 4:52 AM, Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au> wrote: > I've had a go at writing a proposal for some alternative spec text to > resolve this issue. > > --- > When the user is unable to make direct use of the image, e.g. due to a > visual disability or because they are using a text terminal with no graphics > capabilities, user agents may also provide the user with the ability to > obtain any other information about the image that may assist the user in > understanding its content or purpose, utilising any available repair > technique. > > Such techniques may be based on information from any relevant source > including, but not limited to, the following suggestions: > * Obtaining the file name from the URL reference or HTTP headers > supplied with the resource, such as the Content-Location or > Content-Disposition header fields. > * Extracting human readable metadata embedded within the resource. > e.g. EXIF, RDF or XMP. > * Referring to alternative text associated with another instance of the > same resource on the page. > * Applying OCR techniques to recognise and extract textual content that > is graphically represented on the image. > > For more information, refer to the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines > techniques for repairing missing content ([UAAG10-TECHS], section 2.7). > --- > > (Note that the first 3 techniques listed above are based on the techniques > listed in UAAG) > The above is overkill, and will muddy what will and won't happen in the spec. What is happening in the spec is that there is a mix between directives to authors and directives to user agents, and such a mix will cause confusion, to the authors at least. What you're doing here, Lachlan, isn't solving the problem that Matt pointed out, but adding yet more data that authors won't understand, and providing information that user agents most likely won't need. Wasn't the whole point of this change proposal the fact that anything about directing the user agents to repair the missing alt information dilutes the fact that authors are required to provide information about the image in the alt tag? Listing any of the various techniques doesn't solve this, it just makes it more confusing. I think Matt's original proposal was good. It's a clean change, removes the confusion, and isn't a burdensome edit. More importantly, it doesn't let authors off the hook. > -- > Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software Shelley > http://lachy.id.au/ > http://www.opera.com/ > >
Received on Friday, 22 January 2010 14:23:28 UTC