null alt-text, surveys, and progress of ERT (was: Re: null alt-text, spacers, etc. etc.)

I have reposted my proposal for null alt-text, spacers, etc. [1].  However 
I do not feel that it is finished yet. After the discussion that we have 
had on this list and the WCAG list about alt-text, I think we ought to 
stage another survey.  There are a lot of opinions on this topic in both 
this group and the WCAG working group.  It would be good to find out the 
current sentiment of users, both experienced and novice.  Len's survey 
provides a good starting point. I would like responses from more users and 
with a wider range of experience with the Web.

As a first step towards a new survey, I started implementing the examples 
from the Techniques from WCAG [2].

Note that this is a draft since
1. i wanted feedback on whether this is a good idea before investing more 
time (items marked with @@ are not complete) and
2. this was my first attempt and could probably be made clearer or better 
in some way.

I have been including implementation information for WCAG's sake. We might 
want to separate these out at some point...or include the info as 
footnotes??  Not sure.

Please note that I do not think this needs to hold up work on the ERT in 
any way.  We should still be aiming to release a first draft in 
February.  As such, I believe we can put our best understanding of the 
situation in the document.  Working drafts have the following statement in 
their status:
<blockquote>This is a W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other 
interested parties. It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or 
obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C 
Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in 
progress".
</blockquote>

please send reviews to the list.  note that i am working with ian to 
install a more automated issue tracking tool.  this should be up and 
running this week.

thoughts?
--w

[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/tech1-1.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/survey1-1.html
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--

Received on Tuesday, 11 January 2000 16:48:26 UTC