Re: testing versus expert opinion

On Sep 11, 2007, at 5:30 AM, Steve Faulkner wrote:

> 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.

At the time you sent this I pretty much agreed with what others said;  
it seems like a clever solution but it also seems like making alt=""  
and alt=" " semantically different will lead to mistakes that are very  
hard to spot.

Regards,
Maciej

>
>
>
> 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
> Web Accessibility Toolbar - http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html