- From: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>
- Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:22:14 +0200
- To: "Jan Richards" <jan.richards@utoronto.ca>, "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: "Al Gilman" <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>, "Jim Jewett" <jimjjewett@gmail.com>, "W3C WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, "public html for all" <list@html4all.org>, "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:55:06 +0200, Jan Richards <jan.richards@utoronto.ca> wrote: > If I may, I would like to replace "is important" with "CONVEYS > INFORMATION", as in: > > (1) Image DOES NOT CONVEY INFORMATION, alternative text is available. > (alt="") > (2) Image CONVEYS INFORMATION, alternative text is available. (alt="...") > > Now, in my opinion, a missing "alt" attribute actually represents: > > (3-REWORDED) Image MAY OR MAY NOT CONVEY INFORMATION and alternative > text is not available. I think here you start to confuse the issue. If an image does not convey information there is a clear solution: set the alt attribute to the empty string. Whether or not authors actually do that is a matter of conformance. If an image does not convey information and has no alt attribute specified it is non-conforming. Similarly if an image does convey information and alternative text is available setting the alt attribute to the empty string would be non-conforming. > Now, I think there is a fourth state that I see use in representing: > > (4-NEW) A tool (CMS, etc.) knows that the image CONVEYS INFORMATION > (e.g. someone uploaded it from their camera, so it's probably not a > blank placeholder), but alternative text is not available. > > That said, I'm not sure how (4) should be represented (e.g., some have > suggested something like alt="_none"). This is case three. -- Anne van Kesteren <http://annevankesteren.nl/> <http://www.opera.com/>
Received on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 21:22:52 UTC