Re: Request for review of alt and alt value for authoring or publishing tools

Ian Hickson wrote:
> I did consider this, however -- it has been suggested several times in the 
> past. The problem is that I am skeptical that magic keywords won't be 
> abused as much as the simpler syntax we have now. If anything, the 
> longdesc="" attribute should show us how much authors are likely to use 
> nonsense values. longdesc="" is supposed to take a URI, but a huge 
> fraction of longdesc="" attributes have strings that are not URIs at all. 
> (The most common longdesc="" value is the empty string!)

Please note that because use of @longdesc in very small in comparison to 
other elements, does not mean it has no value. Because it can be abused, 
does not mean it has no value and the same applies even if It's 
implementation is flawed.  I understand that you wish to develop the 
spec in a way that can minimize abuse and that is laudable but this 
should not be done at the expense of elements and attributes that are 
explicitly designed to support the needs of people with disabilities.

Cheers

Josh

Received on Wednesday, 16 April 2008 09:36:33 UTC