- From: Brian Kelly <lisbk@ukoln.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 09:25:31 -0000
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org, "B.K. DeLong" <bkdelong@naw.org>
----- Original Message ----- From: B.K. DeLong <bkdelong@naw.org> To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 1999 1:29 AM Subject: Microsoft's response on the ALT attribute and how Frontpage deals with it >My comments interspersed. > >>From: A Microsoft Product Manager >>To: "'bkdelong@naw.org'" <bkdelong@naw.org> >>Subject: FW: ALT attributes default to filesize and filename >> >>There is no way for software to know that a magnifying glass is for >>searching. There is a way in the image properties dialog box to put >>whatever alt text you want in for an image. We have to pick a default. The >>benefit to having the file size over nothing is that users who have their >>browsers set to not download images will be able to see how big (read: how >>long it will take to download) each image on the page. > >My question was why would they care what the image size is if they have >images turned off. Note she didn't address text-browsers or people using >screen readers. >-- >B.K. DeLong 360 Huntington Ave. I think you're being unfair in yopur response. An authoring tool has three options for providing defaults ALT values - give a null string, give a standard chunk of text "This is an image" or provide information automatically derived from the image file "Size =100 Kb". Of these alternatives, I think the latter is preferable. What concrete suggestion would you make to vendors of authoring tools? Thanks Brian Kelly ------------------------------------------------------ Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, England, BA2 7AY Email: b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk URL: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ Homepage: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly.html Phone: 01225 323943 FAX: 01225 826838
Received on Tuesday, 26 January 1999 04:26:30 UTC