Re: Discussion on Change Proposal for ISSUE-66

On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:32:37 +0100, Laura Carlson  
<laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 9:25 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Jan 22, 2010, at 2:52 AM, Lachlan Hunt 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.

I don't think the question of what the user is doing is actually relevant  
to this point. I would therefore remove this paragraph, and the following  
techniques, leaving us with the reference....

>>> 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 UAAG 2 also talks about this [1]

>> After seeing it, I think it might read better without the list of
>> specific techniques. They are neat ideas but it seems too much detail
>> for something that really is just implementation advice. The first and
>> last bits sound good to me, at least.
>
> I agree, Maciej. But I'd cut it even more. Like Shelley said, it could
> very well be confusing to authors and used as a loophole not to write
> text alternatives [1].
>
> If in fact anything is needed, I'd suggest simply using the last bit.
> Maybe something like:
>
> "For User Agent advice on techniques for repairing missing content
> please refer to the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines."

If the UAAG documentation doesn't provide sufficient ideas about how to  
guess what an image might represent in a given circumstance, I would  
suggest providing feedback to them suggesting they add more, rather than  
squeezing it into the hTML 5 spec.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG20/#principle-perceivable

cheers

Chaals

-- 
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 Sunday, 24 January 2010 07:13:50 UTC