- From: Alan J. Flavell <flavell@a5.ph.gla.ac.uk>
- Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 11:58:36 +0100 (BST)
- To: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, William Loughborough wrote: > In summary: Authors must decide: 1) if a particular image is purely > decorational; 2) it's an image not worth writing any descriptive or > replacement text for; I've maintained the view that ALT text is meant to be a functional alternative for the image, not "descriptive". If something descriptive is required, you have the TITLE and LONGDESC attributes available. The unfortunate spot in the HTML4 specification where ALT is described as "short description" in my opinion is an editorial blunder, and is incompatible with the better-informed description at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/objects.html#h-13.8 where it says: "alternate text to serve as content when the element cannot be rendered normally". "To serve as content" and "to describe the content" are two quite different concepts, which are in general incompatible with each other, which fits very well with the fact that HTML has different attributes for these purposes. The TITLE attribute is available for a short description of the content; the ALT attribute is meant to "serve as content" i.e to be a functional replacement for the image, not to be a description of it. Sometimes the correct functional replacement for an image seems indeed to be a null string, or some kind of separator. There have been detailed arguments (some at the level of HTML technicalities, some based on the actual behaviour of current browsers) as to whether the use of nothing more than "white space" in the ALT attribute is acceptable. Maybe non-white space should be used, but I don't want to stall the discussion on that kind of detail. I have to express my dislike of your phrase "not worth writing". There are times, in my view, when the correct functional replacement is indeed null, and writing it is the correct thing to do, rather than mere laziness as you seem to imply. I don't see any objection to having null or only-space ALT attribute with a meaningful descriptive TITLE, in appropriate situations. It closely fits the principles of the (better-informed) parts of the HTML4 specification, for example. The only practical objection for that is the lack of support for it in certain popular browser versions. But it would be a pity to ruin the documented solution based only on the inadequacy of some currently-available client software. best regards
Received on Friday, 29 September 2000 06:58:39 UTC