FW: Exceptions in guideline formulations (non-urgent)

With the permission of Roberto, I forward our off-list discussion about
whether "" is a text equivalent or not. Our conclusion:

The fact that two people who both know about accessibility can't agree on
whether alt="" is a text equivalent or not means we need to work on our
explanations!

> > Yvette:
> >Respectfully, I disagree with you. I strongly feel we need
> to keep the
> >guidelines simple and leave the exceptions to the success criteria.
>
> Roberto: 
> I agree with you but need to be clarify what is a "text
> equivalent".

Yvette:
Yes, we definitely do!

> Roberto: 
> For
> me, text equivalent is, for eg, an "alt" attribute, not an empty tag.
> Remember that is different to have alt=" " and alt=""... second one is
> empty, first one is a blank space...

Yvette:
I know, I did mean alt="". I think we both agree that this is the correct
way to handle decorative images. We just disagree on whether you can call
that a text equivalent or not. I think an empty text equivalent still is a
text equivalent. It's like in math: the empty set is a set too.

> > Yvette:
> >As I see it, an empty string is a text equivalent too. So
> yes, I would
> >require a decorative image to have a text equivalent: "". I do agree
> with
> >you that we need to make this clearer than it is in the current
> formulation
> >of the SC.
>
> Roberto:
> Empty string is not a text equivalent... if it is "empty" it don't
> contain nothing :)

Yvette: 
To me, that's the whole idea of alts for decorative images: that they
contain nothing :-)

The fact that two people who both know about accessibility can't agree on
whether alt="" is a text equivalent or not definitely means we need to work
on our explanations :-)

Yvette Hoitink
CEO Heritas, Enschede, The Netherlands
E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl

Received on Thursday, 4 March 2004 15:18:46 UTC