Re: testing versus expert opinion

hi Anne and Maciej,

OK so at least this exchange between us has proved worthwhile in that a non
adversarial dialogue has started, lets use this opportunity to keep keep the
lines of communication open in the future.

I would appreciate your thoughts on a question i posed on the public HTML WG
list (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Sep/0150.html)
when you have the time.


On 11/09/2007, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:02:18 +0200, Steve Faulkner
> <sfaulkner@paciellogroup.com> wrote:
> >> The alt= attribute is a known open issue.
> >
> > It would be good if it has that status, that it be recorded as such in
> > the spec. To date I have seen nothing from the editors of the spec to
> > indicate this (either in the spec, on the html wg list or on IRC).
>
> I agree this would be nice. As has been stated before on public-html
> volunteers are needed to make it easy to mark up open issues in the
> specification. I believe Simon Pieters has done some work there recently,
> but I'm not sure where it ended up.
>
>
> > I do think that making such contraversial changes to the spec without
> > debate and research does create an atmosphere in which adversarial
> > exchanges
> > flourish.
>
> It's a draft. Until recently the draft didn't say much about <img> at all.
> Now it contains an idea from the editor on how alt= can be handled
> including lots of detailed examples on how to write good alt text. This
> seems like a good thing. Apparently one of the changes has a negative
> impact on (some) assistive technology. This has been pointed out on the
> HTML WG mailing list and several weblogs. I'd assume that whenever the
> editor is going to look at feedback for the alt= attribute again he'll
> take all that into account. This is how the editing process is functioning
> and it works pretty well as progress is made quite fast.
>
> (FWIW, there are a lot of ideas in the draft there's no real agreement
> about yet. I'd assume lots of the things in there are controversial for
> Microsoft for instance. These are all issues that will be dealt with in
> one way or another in an open way and nobody will be ignored. (As you
> might recall, it were mostly the WHATWG contributers actively pushing
> people (through their weblogs) to join the HTML WG so they can give
> feedback.))
>
>
> --
> Anne van Kesteren
> <http://annevankesteren.nl/>
> <http://www.opera.com/>
>



-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
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