- From: Liam Quinn <liam@htmlhelp.com>
- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 13:02:35 -0500
- To: Jordan Reiter <jreiter@mail.slc.edu>, www-html@w3.org
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At 03:46 AM 24/01/98 -0500, Jordan Reiter wrote:
>Jukka Korpela felt an urge to reveal at 7:44 AM -0000 on 1/23/98:
>
>> An early (June 1993) draft for HTML,
>> <URL:http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt>
>> described ALT as follows:
>>
>> ALT Optional alternative text as an alternative
>> to the graphics for display in text-only
>> environments.
>>
>> On the other hand, it gave the following example (typos corrected
here):
>>
>> Warning: <IMG SRC ="triangle.gif" ALT="Warning:"> This must be
>> done by a qualified technician.
>>
>> which suggests to me that they didn't really _mean_ what they wrote.
>
>As far as I see it, in a matter of *usefulness*, the most important thing
>ALT text can do is replace the *function* of the image. In other words,
the
>triangle.gif could very well have been the standard "warning" icon--the
>triangle with the exclamation point in it. Here, the meaning is retained.
Here, the meaning is redundant. A speech browser, search engine, or Lynx
would render the above example as
Warning: Warning: This must be
done by a qualified technician.
Oops. Hopefully people now see why ALT="" would be more appropriate in
this case. If the warning icon were moved in front of the text
"Warning:", then ALT="**" or something similar might be useful.
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--
Liam Quinn
Web Design Group Enhanced Designs, Web Site Development
http://www.htmlhelp.com/ http://enhanced-designs.com/
Received on Saturday, 24 January 1998 13:01:16 UTC