Re: [css-pseudo] please make sure pseudo-element "alt" property makes it into next ED

On 11/10/14, 8:19 AM, "Jens O. Meiert" <jens@meiert.com> wrote:

>> It's been a couple years since CSS "alt" was proposed.
>
>I meant to review the old discussions and this thread for a few days
>but keep on getting stalled (travel): what is the use case for this?
>
>Isn’t this pretty similar to generated content [1] in that separating
>concerns is paramount, and that we don’t want actual contents—and
>especially not important ones—in our style sheets?
>
>
>[1] http://meiert.com/en/blog/20140224/generated-content/


I think the most compelling use case presented is the empty string case, 
where the generated content is meant to be purely decorative. Signaling to 
an AT that the decorative bit should not be read out seems pretty useful.

Your separation of concerns point is valid against the other use case, 
providing an AT hint for a meaningful image, icon or unicode character 
injected via the CSS content property. But consider the case you described 
in your blog post: inserting a localized “New” notification to a gigantic 
corpus using a single style sheet. If the design had called for an image 
or an icon, that notification would have been much less meaningful for 
some AT users. Supplying alt text in that same stylesheet would have 
allowed a notification image or icon without sacrificing accessibility.

Thanks,

Alan

Received on Monday, 10 November 2014 21:10:05 UTC