Re: Is Flickr an Edge Case? (was Re: HTML Action Item 54)

Reposting as not sure msg made it through first time....

I must admit that I'm a little staggered at the amount of conversation 
flickr has produced with regard to alt tags. Responding, here, as a 
totally blind web content 
consumer and not as a member of the IBM Human Ability & Accessibility 
Center, you can put all of the alt tags on flickr that you desire - I'm 
still not going to visit 
it because photos are inheritly visual entities. For the dozen or so 
photos that have received thousands of views (and that, presumably, 
resemble the news 
broadcast rather than the private telephone call), 100 or 150 characters 
of alt text is not going to make the photo any more useful to me. Are we 
next going to 
suggest that all of the songs available on the web need closed caption so 
that deaf folks can enjoy them, too?  As someone who is blind, I realized 
a long time 
ago that photography, driving, and painting are endeavors in which I am 
simply not going to engage and I think it detracts from the conversation 
about the real 
utility of alt to concentrate on what I see as, indeed, an edge case. Of 
course, I am only one person and I'm sure that many of my colleagues and 
fellow PWDs 
will vehemently disagree with me.
 

--> Mike Squillace
IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center
Austin, TX

W:512.823.7423
M:512.970.0066

masquill@us.ibm.com
www.ibm.com/able