- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 22:29:20 +0200
- To: Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
- Cc: James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>, Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com>, W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>
Some comments to Steve's comment: James said: > "contact": <img src="contact.png"> > "about us": <a href="/path/about_us.html"><img src="contact.png"></a> > [...] As is, it's unacceptable to state that these images are > presentational, because it is in the best interest of the spec > editors, browser vendors, AT users, and AT vendors to make sure > rendering engines provide the most accessible output, even with the > worst possible markup: > > <img src="asdfhjklafds_gibberish_12347612394786.png"> > > W3C process requires that, in order for HTML 5 to reach Candidate > Recommendation phase, the Working Group will have to prove on each > part of the spec, that two rendering engines have implemented the > requirement. Despite what is currently in the HTML 5 spec, I don't > believe any of the major browser vendors will decrease the > accessibility of their rendering engines in order to make <img > src="contact.png"> presentational, because it would be a user > interface regression. Steve replied: >> Steve Faulkner, Tue, 10 May 2011 19:20:22 +0100: >>> hi james, just a point of clarification: >>> >>> an <img> without alt is not mapped to role=presentation in HTML5 >>> only <img alt=""> My comment: Steve, the two issues are related. Because, if it is unacceptable to prevent AT from presenting '<img src="contact.png">' as 'contact', then it should also be unacceptable to prevent them from presenting <img alt="" title="Contact" src=i > as "Contact". To treat empty alt="" as role="presentation" would be such a prevention. For example, to say that <img alt="" title="Contact" > is equal to <img role="presentation" title="Contact" > would prevent AT from looking into the @title content of both the former and the latter IMG element. Clearly, it is *dangerous* to use role=presentation on an IMG element: An author should know what she/he is doing, before preventing AT from gleaning information from an IMG. And if an empty alt="" gets the same meaning as role="presentation", then it becomes as dangerous to use alt="" as it is to use role="presentation". -- Leif H Silli
Received on Tuesday, 10 May 2011 20:30:15 UTC