Re: alt text & punctuation - best practice?

> And in the interim we should...?  There are millions of ads on the web
**** that use images.  Are you suggesting all of these should be eliminated?

As a web page user, I would be glad not to have the ads.  However, if
I am a bit more realistic, I realise that the editorial only exists because
it is paid for by the ads.

Personally, if an advertiser fails to reach his audience because he fails
to use text, It doesn't worry me.  For me, ads on web pages are for the
benefit of the content provider, not the audience.

Note that Google adverts have traditionally been text only, although I believe
they now allow some images.

It was certainly clear to me that the version one guidelines aimed towards the
elimination of text as images, although this was qualified by a temporary
permission.  The aim of downloadable fonts was to reduce the need for text
as images, but, of course, pages are designed for primarily visual use,
and just using fonts would make page styles too alike for the designers.

Text as images is almost always logically styling and should not be done in
the HTML if you really buy the separation of form from content.  (There are
some, relatively rare cases, where the document wants to represent a languague
script (including maths) for which the recipient's browser doesn't have 
proper support (e.g. providing the Chinese characters of a hotel's address
for Western visitors, to show to a taxi driver - they don't need to be able
to read it themselves).

Received on Monday, 21 June 2004 17:17:58 UTC