Re: GL's interpretation of null alt-text

At 03:21 PM 11/10/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>A while back ER requested that GL discuss "null alt-text."  It was 
>discussed  t our 28 October telecon [1].
>
>Our conclusions from that call are as follows:
>
>1.  authors  shouldn't use " " since spaces are ignored by user agents.
>2. &nbsp is just another form of white space and therefore should be 
>avoided because it should not be used for formatting. it should only used 
>to keep pieces of text together (e.g. in WCAG we keep the word "priority" 
>and the level together).
>3. <A href="foo.html"> <img alt="" src=...> prices </A> is o.k.
>4. <A href="foo.html"> <img alt="prices" ...><img alt="" src=...> </A> is 
>not o.k. an abuse of the image element.
>
>Therefore, if the rest of the members of this working group agrees with 
>these conclusions we will send them on to ER as well as incorporate them 
>into the Techniques document.

So far as I know I have not received answers to the questions raised in 

 Re: minutes posted
 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/1999OctDec/0021.html

about this point.  

To recap in brief,

What user agents ignore the space character in ALT=" "?  What do they do?

What access impairment is caused by the use of ALT="&nbsp;" on a spacer
image used inline between otherwise un-separated text content?  How should
one mark this up otherwise if not ALT=" "?

Unless someone can answer those questions better, 
I would like to dissent on points 1. and 2.

Al

>
>--wendy
>
>[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/meetings/19991028.html
> 

Received on Wednesday, 10 November 1999 17:29:47 UTC