Re: several messages about alt

On Apr 16, 2008, at 22:36, Martin Atkins wrote:
> * Accept that invalid HTML is going to be created when the user does  
> not provide alternative text and live with it. This could be  
> supplemented with a strong recommendation in the software that  
> alternative text be provided, thus informing the author of his  
> "responsibilities".


That's not really an option.

Copying and pasting what Hixie already quoted in his "Re: several  
messages":

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> On Jan 23, 2006, at 18:43, dolphinling wrote:
>>
>> Second, it could force authoring tools to produce invalid documents  
>> if
>> the author did not provide any alt text. However, those documents
>> would be non-conformant anyway, so this is not a huge problem.
>
> It is. Authoring tools are judged by taking a page authored using the
> tool and running it through the W3C Validator or, presumably in the
> future, through an HTML5 conformance checker. Authoring tool makers  
> who
> are capable of making their tool produce syntactically conforming
> documents will want to do so and minimize the chance that the users of
> their software tarnish the reputation of the tool in the eyes of  
> people
> who use an automated test as a litmus test of authoring tool bogosity.
> (People who test tools that way will outnumber the people who make a
> more profound analysis due to the "validate, validate, validate"
> propaganda.)


-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 16 April 2008 20:35:17 UTC