Chairs: Request for consideration (Issue 122)

Chairs,

 

It appears that I have missed a deadline by roughly 2.5 hours (welcome to
the West Coast), however I request that my objection to "Change Proposal
to permit authors to provide text alternatives for images considered to
enhance the themes or subject matter of a page"
(http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/thematicimages) be
considered in your deliberations on the Straw Poll for Issue 122
(http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/issue-122-objection-poll/) 

 

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Both Change Proposal's under consideration rely on the current author
guidance text here: 

http://dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/#decorative 

 

...text that is taken from the document the second Change Proposal
references here:

"Exceptions to this rule, in cases where CSS cannot be used to display an
entirely decorative image, are covered by the HTML5: Techniques for
providing useful text alternatives. [HTML ALT TECHS:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques]"

 

Either way, the appropriate author guidance is originating from the same
source today.

 

I am confident that either proposal meets our greater need, and further
support the proposed guidance text; author guidance that will be
maintained within WAI. However I also strongly believe in modularization
as a better way of maintaining the web incrementally, as well as support
moving *all* author guidance for accessibility into a stand-alone
document, which is what Greg's proposal suggests (and for which Steve is
editor). If author guidance can be in a document smaller than the omnibus
HTML5, making modifications and changes there (if required) would be
significantly easier than reworking the larger HTML5 standard.

 

The second proposal
(http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/purely_decorative_images)
proposes this, whilst the first extracts text from "HTML5: Techniques for
providing useful text alternatives" and directly inserts it into HTML5
"The Standard". While this may prove to be harmless over the long run,
there is also a risk that the guidance may become outdated or changed in
the future, with the potential of having contradictory texts in different
locations. The risk is small, but exists.

 

I object then to the first proposal
(http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/thematicimages) based on
this possible risk.

 

JF

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John  Foliot

Program Manager

Stanford Online Accessibility Program

http://soap.stanford.edu <http://soap.stanford.edu/>  

Stanford University

Tel: 650-469-5785

 

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Co-chair - W3C HTML5 Accessibility Task Force (Media)

http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Main_Page

 

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