- From: Justin James <j_james@mindspring.com>
- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:24:24 -0400
- To: "'Leif Halvard Silli'" <lhs@malform.no>
- Cc: "'Gez Lemon'" <gez.lemon@gmail.com>, "'Patrick H. Lauke'" <redux@splintered.co.uk>, <wai-xtech@w3.org>, <public-html@w3.org>
> -----Original Message----- > From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On > Behalf Of Leif Halvard Silli > Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:12 PM > To: Justin James > Cc: 'Gez Lemon'; 'Patrick H. Lauke'; wai-xtech@w3.org; public- > html@w3.org > Subject: Re: Flickr and alt > > > Justin James 2008-08-19 22.38: > > >> Leif Halvard Silli Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 2:49 > > > >> It seems to me that the understanding of conformance versus > >> validation could be improved by requiring the role="" > >> attribute, and have spesific @alt requirements for each role. > > > > The techno-geek in me loves this idea. The pragmatist in me > > says that it makes things too complicated for the typical HTML > > author. :( > > > > Unless, of course, we assign a default @role for @role="" and a > > missing @role, and the default @role has @alt rules of "@alt > > must be present (even with a value of empty string), see WCAG > > for information on how to use it." That would take the entire > > thrust of Karl's proposal and merge it with this excellent idea > > presented here. The large majority of HTML authors who are > > savvy enough to use @role will also be able to follow along > > with the idea that @role can affect @alt requirements. > > A default @role value? Perhaps. Against 1: The presence of @role > is very simple to validate. So why allow omitting it? To validate > HTML 4 docs as if being HTML 5? Against 2: What validation > response should lack of @role then lead to? The reason why I suggest that we allow it to be omitted, is because it is a pretty large burden to impose on HTML authors to ask them to try to categorize every tag they use into the @role system. Creating a role called "unspecified", and spec'ing it so that anything where @role is omitted or equal to empty string is equivalent to @role=unspecified makes it possible for people who do not care about @role (which will be the vast majority of HTML authors, unfortunately), who do not need @role (not too many HTML authors), or who can't figure out the right value for @role (a fairly frequent case, I suspect) to still be writing valid and conforming code. One contributing factor in why I feel this way, is that I am of the opinion that @role should be available on nearly every element in the body of an HTML document. > Some tryouts for the last question: If the default value was > > (1) somethign requiring alt text => endless requests for alt text > (though the author could add @role to get rid of many of them.) > (2) role="decorative" => endless requests for @alt text removal. > (3) role="undefined" => error response = not what you wanted. > (4) role="private-undefined" (the name of the default role should > seem unfitting for "public" pages) => validator announces > > (a) the lack of @role; (b) the name of the default role (c) that > such a value is incorrect for pages which are corporate, > governmental or public, and for all other pages in need of a > measure of universal access and accessibility (d) that the @alt > can not be evaluated before @role is added (though the presence of > @alt, and - possibly - repeated alt values could be evaluated, > depending on how the defult value was defined, and always with an > advice to add @role before editing the @alt attribute). I tend to favor a behavior of missing/empty/"unspecified" @role value to behave consistently with Karl's proposal from yesterday (at least in regards to @alt), of "@alt is a mandatory attribute, even if it is simply empty, see WCAG for accessibility information". It is simply the best proposal I have seen on the subject, despite the hundreds of emails on the topic. That being said, your option #4 is darned close to what I would expect and want, and I suspect it's what you favor too, given the detail you give it in your description. I do not think the two ideas are incompatible, and indeed, I think that they complement each other extraordinarily well! > Over all, @role would open many new possibilities for better > validation services: > > Repeated alt could trigger a response. (It would be ok for IMG-s > with e.g. role=logo, but unexpected with some other roles.) Some > loopholes could become narrower. (Use of white-space in order to > achieve conformance should e.g. throw an error if the role is > role="logo".) @Role would allow the validator to apply > "heuristics". (E.g., for advice, the validator could "calculate" > whether the presence of role="logo" one one IMG, lowers or > increeases the chance that role=private-undefined on another seems > correct, or not.) I agree 100%! I think that @role not only opens up great things for validation, but also for search engines and any other "Semantic Web"-consuming/parsing application. But I also think it's way too much to ask of many (if not most) HTML authors to always use it, let alone use it correctly (much like @alt, sadly). J.Ja
Received on Wednesday, 20 August 2008 05:25:32 UTC