- From: Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
- Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 14:09:56 -0400
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
There is a thread currently going on on WebWatch concerning our old friend null ALT text. I believe that this is a good example of the question of "what do we do about conflicting interests of different user groups." On the face of it there would appear to be a conflict between two user groups in this case, and the question is not a make-or-break issue for either group. It is a matter of preference or optimization on both sides of the dispute. Maybe to learn how we deal with conflicts between different stakeholder interests, we might work on this pilot project a bit and see what works here. Try a picoElephant, first. Al -- sample post from WebWatch thread. At 01:06 PM 2001-09-24 , love26@gorge.net wrote: >At 11:52 AM 9/24/01 -0500, Kelly Ford wrote: >>they raised serious issues about alt="" for the sighted user who browses >>with image loading disabled. > >Only "serious" if they can't read the first column and are unable to figure >out that the second is just a shorthand pictorial for the second. Pedantics >Anonymous? > [Al, here.] Before we dismiss the seriousness of any user's concerns we need to hear what the concerns are. My suspicion is the concern has to do with inappropriately used instances of ALT equals quote quote. If User Agents comply with the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines from the W3C as stated in the Candidate Recommendation document, I don't think these users have a problem. Users can chose by user policy to believe the author that there is nothing informative in that image or to get a synthesized ALT that gives a clue to what went in that space. You can always retrieve the image into an ALT-free space, too. Or set the browser so you are guaranteed a hint as to the contents of the image so as to review what the Author regarded as non-informative. This is a FAQ that comes back and back. Where is the answer that these people can buy? I think that IF we can agree that the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines have captured what the level of agreement should be across the behavior of user software, we can begin to nail down the story so that people who might think this is a serious problem for that user group will either convince us that it is a serious problem, or we will convince them that the problem is handled, is not really a problem on further consideration. We may actually need to be more specific about techniques in the above context and be more concrete in the next UAAG that leaves Candidate Recommendation for a more definitive status. Al >-- >Love. >EACH UN-INDEXED/ANNOTATED WEB POSTING WE MAKE IS TESTAMENT TO OUR HYPOCRISY > > >To Post a message, send it to: webwatch@eGroups.com >To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: webwatch-unsubscribe@eGroups.com > >Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ >
Received on Monday, 24 September 2001 14:05:44 UTC