Walter Underwood wrote:
Local textual summaries are rather common on the web. The <a> tag, for example. Current accessibility practice is to make the anchor text understandable out of context. In other words, to make it a summary of the linked resource. Even if the remote resource is text!
For the <img> tag, the alt tag is used to provide a local, textual equivalent. Again, this is required practice for accessibility. Same thing for graphs, charts, audio, and video.
These are top-level requirements. They fit on the WAI pocket card. There are ten "quick tips" and five of them are about local textual equivalents:
An Atom Entry without <content> or <summary> still has a <title>. Even more precisely, the link element contains a 'title' attribute. There's two local summaries for you. As I've pointed out already, none of the most current W3C formats *require* textual metadata, from a schematic perspective. This is because accessibility is a social issue, rather than an interop issue.
Insisting that constraint in the schema is there for accessibility's sake without explaining the *exact* reason is at best doing accessibility a disservice.
I want the to know the precise technical reason for these requirements. No one has given one. We all agree that accessibility is important. Please don't respond to me by saying that accessibility is important.
Robert Sayre
