- From: Yvette P. Hoitink <y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl>
- Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 21:18:43 +0100
- To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
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