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<trackbot> Date: 16 June 2011
<MikeSmith> scribe: Stevef
JS: chairs decision if no alt
then use figcaption
... wait a minute we haven't considered when figcaption may not
be appropraite
... only heuristic is if its too long, then not a good fallback
for alt
<MichaelC> agenda: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Jun/0145.html
JS: can conformance help by defining an upper limit for caption length
JB: from research i have been
doing on it the instances in which you will get much longer
captions is scientific publications
... when i look at the html5 spec they have not contemplated on
how figcaption is going to be used
... diverse types of usage not addrerssed, only some are
suitable for alt fallback
... is there a heuristic that could be used so validity is not
automatically conferred
<janina> http://www.w3.org/2009/06/Text-Alternatives-in-HTML5.html
JB: in certain kinds of scientific publications the figcaption content was not suitab;e
<Zakim> MikeSmith, you wanted to ask for a pointer to guidance that states that text equivalents should be brief
<MikeSmith> scribe: MikeSmith
Stevef: there's not a prescribed length -- not a hard-and-fast rule, as far as I know
… when an AT user is in this situation, they don't want paragraphs of text read out
… one thing I read recently … 75 to 100 characters is one that people have said is a reasonable length
… so a flag could be added -- be if so, it's useful for more than the figcaption case -- it could just as well apply to the actual alt attribute values
… anyway, figcaption text should be read out with an indication that it's coming from a figure caption
… one of the benefits of figcaption is that it's an element and it can have a role
… to the 2nd point that judy made
judy: that was about the appropriateness
… some figure captions do not provide what you would want as alternative text for the image
Stevef: the advantage of a caption is that the caption does not have to all be read out
… imaginable that user can stop the reading of that, unlike for reading out of the accessible name
<scribe> scribe: Stevef
JS: whether we want an flag on alt is a second question
<Zakim> janina, you wanted to say I don't think we have a consensus on that yet. We're talking about heuristically determined fallback, not intentional quthoring
<Zakim> JF, you wanted to say that much of this sounds like authoring issues
JS: this figcaption is not appropriate so it should be used while a 1000 word caption should not be used
JF: its an authroing question,
times when its apprpaiate, other times it could be abused, if
we can put in a marker to flag a long caption
... thought it was the flickr new case
flickr use case
JB: i have not been saying figcaption should be thrown out, but should work for users across a broad range of different types of figure captions
<MikeSmith> scribe: MikeSmith
<richardschwerdtfe> BRB
Stevef: figcaption may at some points be an adequate alternative, and many times it may not
… I would not be averse to having a warning being emitted if figcaption is there but alt is not
<scribe> scribe: Stevef
JS: there is not we can do on the
authoring side, what happens when the authroing is
suboptimal
... if we flagged anything over 200 words we would be doing
something useful
MS: is completely doable in
conformance checkers
... but in order to add it we need a conformance constraint in
the spec
... while en mitting warnings is discretionary
<JF> +1 to experimenting with warning
<Zakim> MikeSmith, you wanted to say that it seems like even many values that casual/naive authors put into alt on img might also not actually be appropriate as text equivalents
<MikeSmith> Stevef: yeah, it's also a concern for the alt attribute
MS: we could try it out
experimentally, but come to some kind of decision about what
the character limit should be
... its easier to do it for an attribute value, eihter way its
not a lot of work
JB: whats the diffrence between a warning and an error, if its not included in the spec as a requirement then it would be better to be an error
MS: need a normative statement
somewhere, would be better in the HTMl5 spec
... but could be from another document
JB: go for what is better, needs to be attached to the figcaption
MS: getting something done sooner rather than later could add warning now
JB: what we are looking at is the
different parts of the alt text vlaidation decision
... and are entertaining filing a re-open request
... if have consensus then want to reopen
JS: user agents do a specific thing when the user agent does not find an alt so thens uses figcaption
MS: as far as the part of the spec effecetd by the working group decision
<MikeSmith> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/embedded-content-1.html#guidance-for-conformance-checkers
<MikeSmith> Stevef: yeah, none of the information for how UAs should handle this are in the spec now… which is part of the reason what I wrote up the API mappings doc
<MikeSmith> Stevef: one thing we should be doing is describing what should happen in this instance as far as a browser behavior is concerned -- how to sensibly map figcaption
<MikeSmith> Stevef: there is the case where it should just be ignored
JF: you said something ealrier, about taking figcaption and dumping it in as alt text
JS: but it sounds like it uses as
an alt
... something is better than nothing
JF: no illusions that its is alt
but its some text associated with the image
... agrees with the idea about a warning
... figcaption is like a special paragraph, a screen reader
will read it out the same as it reads a p
stevef: much lost sorry
MS: from the autthroing side,
this is what we have warnings for, thats why it seems difficult
to make it a strict error case
... i wanted to get back to saying is from the UA behaviour
side, its not in the html5 spec, but nothing similar
<MikeSmith> Stevef: yeah, that is the intention for these sort of things
<MikeSmith> … to at least give some sort of indication about how it should work
<MikeSmith> … I've talked to David Bolter about some this already
<MikeSmith> … I understand the difference that Janina is talking about
<MikeSmith> … the figcaption case gives users greater control
<MikeSmith> … for one, instead of reading out the caption automatically, it could just indicate that alternative text is available in the caption, and asking if the user wants it read out
<MikeSmith> Stevef: ultimately, this guidance should be coming from WAI
MS: almost out of time, has been
useful biut won't get much resolution from this today, so take
it to the mailing list and I can then implement something
experimental in the conformance checker
... we wnated to remind everbody that a number of people have
been assigned review tasks for the last call working
drafts!
<MikeSmith> http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Spec_Review
JS: need people to start getting reviews in
deadline mid july
<MikeSmith> janina: need review comments by mid-July but want people to start getting comments in sooner, instead of all at once in July
<janina> scribe: janina
<MikeSmith> comments on section 3.5 from Cynthia: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Jun/0120.html
<MikeSmith> adjourned
This is scribe.perl Revision: 1.136 of Date: 2011/05/12 12:01:43 Check for newer version at http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/scribe/ Guessing input format: RRSAgent_Text_Format (score 1.00) Succeeded: s/should broadly work for users/should work for users across a broad range of different types of figure captions/ Succeeded: s/entertaining a/entertaining filing a/ Found Scribe: Stevef Inferring ScribeNick: Stevef Found Scribe: MikeSmith Inferring ScribeNick: MikeSmith Found Scribe: Stevef Inferring ScribeNick: Stevef Found Scribe: MikeSmith Inferring ScribeNick: MikeSmith Found Scribe: Stevef Inferring ScribeNick: Stevef Found Scribe: janina Inferring ScribeNick: janina Scribes: Stevef, MikeSmith, janina ScribeNicks: Stevef, MikeSmith, janina Default Present: John_Foliot, Janina_Sajka, Mike, Judy, Lynn_Holdsworth, Rich_Schwerdtfeger, Steve, Marco_Ranon, Michael_Cooper Present: John_Foliot Janina_Sajka Mike Judy Lynn_Holdsworth Rich_Schwerdtfeger Steve Marco_Ranon Michael_Cooper Agenda: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2011Jun/0145.html WARNING: No meeting chair found! You should specify the meeting chair like this: <dbooth> Chair: dbooth Found Date: 16 Jun 2011 Guessing minutes URL: http://www.w3.org/2011/06/16-html-a11y-minutes.html People with action items: WARNING: Input appears to use implicit continuation lines. You may need the "-implicitContinuations" option.[End of scribe.perl diagnostic output]