- From: Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net>
- Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:07:26 +1000
- To: HTMLWG <public-html@w3.org>, wai-xtech@w3.org
On Thu, Aug 16, 2007 at 01:43:04PM +1000, Lachlan Hunt wrote: > IIRC, one of the problems with that approach is that encourages authoring > tools wanting to output conforming markup to generate useless alt text, > which is often worse than providing no alt attribute at all. On the contrary, it could also encourage authoring tools wanting to output conformant markup to prompt the author appropriately in the user interface to supply the necessary ALT text. Extrapolating from the worst-case implementation, and then using this as a basis for making normative claims about what should be in the spec, does nothing to promote better practices on the part of authoring tools, or of authors for that matter. Rather, requiring the ALT attribute as in HTML 4, and referring authoring tool implementors to the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines regarding appropriate UI implementation techniques, would at least yield a spec that encourages proper behaviour, which is better than one that does not. In writing a spec for a new language (even if a revised version of an existing language), it is possible - desirable in many cases, to issue more precise conformance requirements; and htese can include conformance requirements, or at least recommendations, for authoring tool implementations.
Received on Thursday, 16 August 2007 04:07:36 UTC