Re: Discussion on Change Proposal for ISSUE-66

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com> wrote:
> Then there's the issue of performance -- authoring tools only have to
> try to determine the alt text once. Do we really want every user agent
> to attempt the same process every time the web page is opened? For
> every image?

What's the alternative?  If neither the author nor the authoring tool
fills in the alt-text, do we just shrug our shoulders and say "Sorry,
blind people, guess you're out of luck."?

It seems pretty obvious that the correct solution for accessibility is
to address this issue at *all* levels.  The earlier the better, but
it's not excusable to fail users with accessibility needs when we
*can* do something to help them.

I'm just behind a slight softening of the spec text, as Lachlan and
Maciej have suggested.

~TJ