Re: DRAFT response Re[2]: Request for PFWG WAI review of Omitting ?alt Attribute for Critical Content

On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 06:48:54PM -0500, David Poehlman wrote:
> Surely, there is no element or attribute anywhere in any spec that would 
> say, when you publish your documents, not only must you use an alt attrib, 
> you also must write into it that the image is not important if it is not 
> important.

The proposal is:

ALT="text" means that "text" is an alternative to the image.
alt="" means that the image is purely decorative or used only as formatting.

Omitting @alt entirely is not allowed, as a matter of syntax, as in HTML 4.01.

There is nothing new or unusual here; this is how specifications prescribe
syntax and semantics.

Of course, there might be substantive objections to the proposal, but this
isn't one of them.