Re: One more thought about requiring the alt to add to the pile

On Apr 20, 2008, at 12:25, Steven Faulkner wrote:

>> There has now been a decade-long experiment with making alt a syntax
>> requirement. I think this experiment shows that doing so has the  
>> downside of
>> inducing bogus alt. When validation has downsides, as a validator  
>> developer,
>> I want to work to remove the downsides.
>
> Where is the empirical data to support your assumptions? All we
> currently have on both sides is anecdote and conviction.


All I have is unwritten anecdotal data that convinces me of the  
*existence* of the phenomenon to a non-trivial extent (from observing  
tool output, from observing what others say when they discuss things  
and from observing that my own thoughts when writing tools or markup  
parallel what I observe others to say or do). It also seems to me that  
the phenomenon of people writing good alt text because a validator  
reminded them *exists*.

My point was that quantitative data about the magnitude of different  
phenomena around alt and how they average out is something we don't  
have.

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

Received on Sunday, 20 April 2008 09:59:26 UTC