- From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:06:51 +1000
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Ian Hickson<ian at hixie.ch> wrote: > On Mon, 10 Aug 2009, Remco wrote: >> >> Shouldn't <video>s and <audio>s (and maybe <object>s too?) also have an >> alt attribute? A quick Google search tells me this has not been >> discussed before. > > For users who can use audio but not video, authors should either provide > audio descriptions in the video file as alternative tracks, or > supplemental material provided in links available to everyone near the > video. > > For users who can use video but not audio, authors should provide > subtitles, captions, or transcripts either in the video or audio file as > supplemental tracks, or in supplemental materials available to everyone in > links near the video. > > For users who can use neither video nor audio, supplemental materials are > likely the best thing for an author to provide, again, in links visible to > all. > > For users of legacy UAs that don't support these features, feature-rich > alternatives such as plugins can be provided as fallback content for > <video> and <audio>. > > Captions and subtitles can be included either directly in the media file, > or scripts can manually support external resources using the cue range > API. Going forward, we will probably also support dedicated formats that > UAs can merge with the video to handle showing external subtitles > natively. > > I don't see a need for an alt="" attribute here. What problem would it > solve that is not solved by the above solutions? There is only one thing I can think about that an "alt" attribute could provide that nothing else does: as a blind user tabs onto a video element, the "alt" attribute's content could be read out and briefly describe what is visible in the poster image - or alternatively give a brief summary of the video. This is useful for all those cases where no surrounding text is given for whatever reason. Where a surrounding text is given, such as the video title and description, such text is likely not necessary. Cheers, Silvia.
Received on Friday, 14 August 2009 06:06:51 UTC