On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 01:51:15 +0200, John Foliot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This might be your justification, but it does not address *any*
accessibility issues - it only makes your life easier.
It's a question of alternatives. If it's a given that the author can't
provide accurate replacement text, what should be put on the <img>? <img
alt=""> or simply leave it <img> so user agents can do image analyzing. Or
maybe there's some better construct? (At some point a product from
Microsoft was pointed out that does this, but I can't find the reference
to it.)
Something that's given is that authors will make it inaccessible if
conformance requires that. If for conformance the alt attribute is
required authors will simply do <img alt=""> and be done with it, which
doesn't really seem to help anyone. I made this point a few times, and you
seem to on ignoring it assuming WYSIWYG editors will solve this. I don't
really buy that, they haven't for the past 10 years and them suddenly
making their application harder to use for the average end user is
unlikely. (Yes, I've heard of one that asks users whether it's a content
or presentational image and then requires alt= in case of a content image.)
The point you seem to try to make is that this problem, that we've been
having for over 10 years, will suddenly solve itself by WYSIWYG editors
and the like requiring replacement text to be provided. I don't really buy
that. There's also evidence that such content producers will harm end
users solely to make their pages conforming to HTML. So given that, what's
the best solution for the end users given those content providers?
How can a group that wants to dismiss LONGDESC because it is flawed at
the same time condone authoring tools that are flawed and seek to write
a SPEC to forgive those flaws?
It's not a flaw in authoring tools, they won't solve this problem. Once an
authoring tool starts to require it I would expect users to simply switch
to one that doesn't. We're trying to have a realistic specification, that
doesn't expect authoring tools to solve problems which they haven't done
in the past 10 years.
The spec should insist that inline images (as opposed to CSS supplied
"decorative" images) have alternative text, and preferably something
that is user friendly - full stop. The author group needs to stop
trying to
determine what is user friendly... You can no more decide what works for
any given user than you can ascertain what flavor of ice-cream they
prefer (or even if they eat ice-cream...)
And you somehow can?
JF (trying *very* hard to remain rational, on topic, and respectful)
Right, "AND ANNE, THAT RIGHT THERE IS EXACTLY THE WHOLE POINT!", "poor
workman", etc.
--
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>
