- From: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
- Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:13:56 +0200
- To: Philip TAYLOR <Philip-and-LeKhanh@Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org>
- CC: HTML4All <list@html4all.org>, Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, wai-xtech@w3.org, Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>, "Michael(tm) Smith" <mike@w3.org>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Philip TAYLOR wrote: > Julian Reschke wrote: > > >> By "no value at all", do you mean (a) "no ALT attribute" > > > > Yes. > > > >> (in which case the answer is that my proposal is > >> syntactically valid, assuming a mandate for ALT > > > > Well, if we insist on requiring the attribute, than not having the > > attribute is invalid. Invalid is bad. This is why we are having this > > discussion, aren't we? > > Fine, so we agree, do we not ? My proposal leads > to valid HTML, and the AT user will learn from the > ALT text supplied that no more meaningful ALT > text was available at the time that the page > was generated. Not sure where we differ ... A string saying "there is no alternate text" may be syntactically valid, but doesn't help the user at all. It will be displayed/read just like it was the alternate text. In general, requiring values for things that can't always be provided is a bad idea. It always leads to authors making up values, which makes the situation *worse* for the people depending on it. BR, Julian PS: I do agree though that it's not correct for the HTML WG to simply ignore what the other WGs say. But this is a process issue.
Received on Friday, 11 April 2008 11:14:34 UTC