- From: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:37:36 -0500
- To: "Al Gilman" <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>
- Cc: "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>, "W3C WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>
Ian wrote: >> The spec says: >> >> When it is possible for alternative text to be provided, for >> example if the image is part of a series of screenshots in a >> magazine review, or part of a comic strip, or is a photograph >> in a blog entry about that photograph, text that conveys can >> serve as a substitute for the image must be given as the >> contents of the alt attribute. >> -- http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#a-key >> >> That seems pretty cut and dry to me. Al wrote: > It has a gratuitous "when it is possible..." The phrase "When possible", seems to fail the W3C's quality assurance requirements, because "when possible" is a subjective term (what is possible to one person may be impossible to another). This would be a discretionary item. It would seem that discretionary items should to be well defined, which is not the case for "when possible" in the current HTML 5 text. The Specification Guidelines in the W3C QA Framework advise specification authors to: "Provide as much information as possible to narrow the allowable choices and to increase predictability...Narrowing choices and increasing predictability enhance the likelihood of interoperability since the implementer chooses from a reduced sample space. Narrowing choices, providing more information, and eliminating incorrect choices increases the chances of correct implementations. An enumerated list of values is one way to constrain the choice of optionality." Does "when possible" meets W3C QA Framework guidelines? Best Regards, Laura -- Laura Carlson
Received on Wednesday, 20 August 2008 14:38:11 UTC