This is an archived snapshot of W3C's public bugzilla bug tracker, decommissioned in April 2019. Please see the home page for more details.

Bug 6496 - Allow <img aria-labelledby> to act as a text alternative
Summary: Allow <img aria-labelledby> to act as a text alternative
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: steve faulkner
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard: accessibility taskforce to review
Keywords: a11y, a11ytf, a11y_text-alt, CR, TrackerIssue
Depends on: 8171
Blocks: 8716
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2009-01-29 15:42 UTC by Simon Pieters
Modified: 2014-02-26 18:20 UTC (History)
12 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Simon Pieters 2009-01-29 15:42:58 UTC
When integrating ARIA in HTML5, the <img> section should probably allow <img aria-labelledby> to be used as a way to "caption" the image (same as title="", <figure><legend>, etc).
Comment 1 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-09-07 10:01:50 UTC
I've integrated ARIA, and allowed aria-labelledby, but making HTML document conformance depend on ARIA seems like a layering violation to me. If the image is described by another paragraph, then use alt="" along with aria-labelledby="...", not just the latter with no alt.
Comment 2 Henri Sivonen 2009-09-08 13:08:12 UTC
Why alt=""? If alt="" means "don't expose to AT", how does the user navigate to the node?

(FWIW, I agree that what's being requested here is a layering violation in principle, but it seems useful not to pretend that HTML and ARIA exist on different layers.)
Comment 3 Michael Cooper 2009-11-03 22:47:11 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 8171 ***
Comment 4 Michael Cooper 2010-02-04 16:42:38 UTC
Removing myself from cc list, default on bug edits is to add, but I'm only acting on behalf of HTML A11Y TF which is already cc'd.
Comment 5 Michael Cooper 2010-02-11 17:26:22 UTC
Per the proposal at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Jan/0245.html, the HTML A11Y TF does not plan to formally work on this issue at this time. This does not mean the TF has no interest in it, but does not have immediate plans to work on it. The TF may review the issue in the future.
Comment 6 Laura Carlson 2010-03-10 12:37:01 UTC
Adding TrackerIssue Keyword.

@aria-labelledby is part of the change proposal, "Replace img Guidance for Conformance Checkers" for HTML WG Issue 31.
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/31

WAI CG Consensus Resolutions on Text alternatives in HTML 5 specifically recommends the use of @aria-labelledby for a short text alternative.
http://www.w3.org/2009/06/Text-Alternatives-in-HTML5
Comment 7 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-04-01 21:58:33 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: 

To reply to comment 2, there's no need to expose the element at all if the description and replacement is completely expressed elsewhere in the page, as far as I can tell.
Comment 9 Martin Kliehm 2010-12-07 14:13:45 UTC
Related to ISSUE-31, further addressed in "HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives" (http://dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/)
Comment 10 Martin Kliehm 2010-12-07 16:08:42 UTC
The bug-triage sub-team thinks this should be an accessibility task force priority.
Comment 11 steve faulkner 2013-02-14 16:27:58 UTC
accessibility taskforce to review
Comment 12 steve faulkner 2013-10-14 15:43:53 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
you have additional information and would like the Editor to reconsider, please
reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML
Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest
title and text for the Tracker Issue; or you may create a Tracker Issue
yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:

   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: wontfix
Change Description: no change
Rationale: alt and aria-labelledby are not the same, alt as implemented has different effects, for example if there is a none empty alt present the presence of the image is identified in most user agents and the text alternative is displayed with a visible relation to the image indicator.