- From: Sean B. Palmer <sean@mysterylights.com>
- Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 18:09:03 -0000
- To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
- Cc: "William Loughborough" <love26@gorge.net>
> Illustrating appropriately is easily thought of as including alt > text for images and all the caption/summary/description/+ I often wonder what the appropriate text alternative would be for a GIF of the Mona Lisa or some similar masterpiece: alt="[Girl Kind-of Smiling]". Sometimes I really don't think there are decent text alternatives for images... but it depends on the image. The more complex the image, the longer the non-mdeia dependant alternative is. > And of course the roots of "depiction" infer evoking a "mental > image" of something. That mental image is actually a lower level > of abstraction from the sub-verbal level of semantics and is what > communicating is about. What was Leonardo trying to put across with the Mona Lisa? What was John Lennon trying to describe with "Strawberry Fields Forever"? Should deaf people have a non-musical equivalent for an embedded MP3 of Strawberry Fields? What would it be: a picture of John Lennon in a tree over some Strawberry Fields, along with a copy of the lyrics? The problem with guidelines is that they constrict and deny creativity. They deny the myriad situations that occur in a hypermedia Web. Human creativity is a subtle thing, and someimtes with years of analysis you can be no closer to undetrstanding the mind of the author... and yet we make this a requirement? Please... Kindest Regards, Sean B. Palmer @prefix : <http://infomesh.net/2001/01/n3terms/#> . [ :name "Sean B. Palmer" ] has :homepage <http://infomesh.net/sbp/> .
Received on Saturday, 13 January 2001 13:10:31 UTC