"alt"-text

Regarding placeholder and automatically generated or default alt-text.

Our goals are to:
1. Insure that evaluation tools catch the lack of informative alt-text.
2. Strongly encourage authors to generate informative alt-text.
3. Make it as easy as possible for authors to create accessible content, in
this case through the inclusion of alt-text registries and other methods of
associating alt-text with images when the images are moved or copied.

Balancing these goals the best compromise may be:

Automatic generation of Alt Text:
* Tools should only generate Alt text when they are absolutly sure of the
meaning (bullets for example)
* If a tool does generate Alt text then the tool should inform the user and
allow the user to change it.

Place-holder Alt text:
* Tools must not generate place-holder Alt text (ever).
* Tools can generate a comment line close to the missing Alt text as a
reminder - (example <! put Alt text here>)
* Tools should not generate NULL Alt text (Alt=""). (Anything inserted into
a document has a meaning.)

Received on Wednesday, 11 November 1998 16:45:14 UTC