Re: ALT revisited (short-term)

to follow up on what Daniel Dardailler said:
> 
> Adding an URL attribute to IMG is a way to handle the long description
> issue. We're still waiting for the requirement report on that item to
> see what's needed.
> 

I have been holding off some input to let the action item stuckees
frame the discussion.

> One of the requirement brought up at the meeting in Sophia was the
> implementation-ness of the solution (can whatever we recommend be used
> in today's browser). Extending HTML is of course not ideal, but having
> rethought about other solutions, I'm not sure there is anything that
> will comply with this requirement anyway (in particular, I realized
> that the CSS 'display: none' feature is not in CSS1 core and therefore
> is not available yet in all CSS-ready browser).
> 

There is a solution that does not involve any change to
standards.  This is to reference the long description from within
the metadata capabilities of the Internet Media Types (formerly
MIME types) framework.  This could be supplied as a text value
for an header field or indirectly by an URI value withing a
header field.

I don't know what fielded GUI browsers include in their
realization of an "information page" or if you can get such a
page for images referenced as the content of an IMG tag.  If the
long description is realized as the text value of an HTTP header
for the image, Lynx, for example, already gives the user an
access path for that information with its image_links mode and
head-request command.

There is a reasonable question as to whether this is too indirect
to satisfy the requirement.  I would prefer to address that with
all deliberate speed in the context of the
requirement-development action item that the WAI WG has started.

--
Al Gilman

Received on Monday, 30 June 1997 13:18:20 UTC