Re: feedback requested on WAI CG Consensus Resolutions on Text alternatives in HTML 5 document

On Aug 31, 2009, at 11:56, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Aug 2009, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> On Aug 25, 2009, at 08:24, Ian Hickson wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't really understand what problem we're trying to solve here.  
>>> Why
>>> would we give authors using WYSIWYG tools a license to not care  
>>> about
>>> making their pages accessible? That seems backwards.
>>
>> It's not about giving authors using WYSIWYG tools a license not to  
>> care
>> about making their pages accessible. It is about acknowledging that  
>> when
>> there's an abstraction layer that hides HTML syntax from the  
>> author, the
>> syntax error-based feedback loop to the author doesn't work and  
>> instead
>> the feedback is deflected by the tool developer.
>
> I don't follow. If the author isn't checking the syntax of the  
> document,
> and if the author is actively ignoring the tool's requests to make the
> document valid, why would the author then complain about the document
> being invalid? Or are you saying other people complain?

I'm saying that tool developers (not all of them) would make things so  
that the situation of the validator complaining doesn't arise.

> I don't fully understand the situation you are describing.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008May/0368.html

>> The right place to for software to complain at users of WYSIWYG tools
>> about lack of accessibility is the WYSIWYG tool complaining at the  
>> user.
>> A validator is the right place to complain at authors who don't use
>> WYSIWYG editor-like abstraction layers between them and HTML syntax.
>
> Agreed. So why does it matter what the validator says to WYSIWYG tool
> users?

I'm not talking about what validators say to WYSIWYG tool *users*. I'm  
talking about what validators say to the developers of the WYSIWYG  
tools and to reviewers.

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

Received on Monday, 31 August 2009 09:25:21 UTC