Re: psl align alt tip with WAI quick tip

On Thu, Apr 28, 2005, Dan Connolly wrote:
> In the WAI quick tips, it's phrased as
> 
>  Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual
>  -- http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/QuickTips/

I asked myself half a dozen times "each visual *what*?" before checking
in a dictionary that indeed, visual was also a noun. Granted, I am not a
native speaker, but I don't think it's a very good sign. If you would
excuse the joke, I am afraid the wording isn't very accessible to this
markup geek.

As someone else noted, the WAI quicktips are very general, whereas the
QA tips are more focused on actual (mostly HTML) markup. In this context, 
"Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual element"
might be more appropriate, but even then, "visual element" is unclear, 
and it's arguable which (HTML) elements are referred to. For instance,
the object element, which I'd consider a "visual" helper, has a
different fallback mechanism than "alt".

On Thu, Apr 28, 2005, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux wrote:
> but I have not updated the code running in the production validator,
> since I'm not quite sure how the validators maintainer deal with this.

I've given hints and instructions in 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qa-dev/2005Apr/0021.html
but in any case, I'd rather not have that wording live on the validator,
not until someone convinces me that "Use the alt attribute to describe
the function of each visual" is appropriate there.
 
Regards,
-- 
olivier

Received on Friday, 29 April 2005 00:43:33 UTC