Re: testing versus expert opinion

thanks to you both for your feedback.

I am surprised that there are not more technical reasons against this
method. BTW I am not married to this idea, just thought it was worthwhile
throwing it into the mix.

 FYI

mike davies has written about the alt issue and brings up some
interesting points about the user agent accessibility guidelines:

The price of omitting the alt -
http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/access/ThePriceOfOmittingTheAlt



On 11/09/2007, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
>
>  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
>
>
>
>



-- 
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