Re: alt curly braces proposal in the editor's HTML5 draft

Laura Carlson 2008-08-11 16.29:

> It seems as if this proposal is for meta data and might fit better in
> a separate img attribute. In any event, it doesn't appear to be a text
> equivalent per WCAG.


[I use "@alt text keywords", as term for both the curly brackets 
and the role="photo tagged"/@tagged proposal.]

I don't agree that the @alt text keyword proposal "is for meta 
data", if by that you have @role in mind. (See my reply to Rob 
[1].) Rather, for users, it offers a way to discern an @alt with a 
textual equivalent from an @alt with merely some general tags. For 
authors, it offers a method of what we could all "lesser degree of 
@alt text conformance". Hence, of course, whether it does actually 
conform, is an important question.

We did, however, discuss the possibility of having a "minimum alt 
text" in keyword form a few times.

Bear in mind that we discuss - I think - photo albums and that 
kind of stuff. It seems that WCAG is far more occupied with 
non-text content with a "meaning" or with a technical 
functionality - e.g see Technique G82 [2] and H37 [3] - than it is 
with photo albums.

As an example of what in WCAG 2.0 such @alt text keywords 
*perhaps* could break, I have looked at F30. [4]

F30 mentions "placeholder text", "programming refererences" (of 
the kind "picture 1", "picture 2") as non successful @alt text. I 
would say, however, that saying "photo" is one step up from e.g. 
"picture 1". On a photo web site, 'photo' as a keyword would be 
useful if it was restricted to photos, and not used on other 
graphics. We talk about conscious tagging, and not accidental 
programming output.  Hence, I don't think it comes in the F30 
cathegory.

(I am not certain were to draw the line, though, between such 
keywords and "regular" alt text in abbreviated/keyword form.)

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Aug/0283.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20080430/G82.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20080430/H37.html
[4] 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20080430/F30.html#F30-examples
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Tuesday, 12 August 2008 00:01:16 UTC