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Bugs/Paragraph-Section-Heading Loophole

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Remove Paragraph-Section-Heading loophole for not providing a text alternative

Bug Number

9217

Bug Title

Remove the Paragraph-Section-Heading loophole for not providing a text alternative.

Spec Section

Images whose contents are not known [1]

The "Images whose contents are not known" section of the HTML5 spec contains the following loophole for not providing a text alternative.

In some unfortunate cases, there might be no alternative text available at all, either because the image is obtained in some automated fashion without any associated alternative text (e.g. a Webcam), or because the page is being generated by a script using user-provided images where the user did not provide suitable or usable alternative text (e.g. photograph sharing sites), or because the author does not himself know what the images represent (e.g. a blind photographer sharing an image on his blog).

In such cases, the alt attribute's value may be omitted, but one of the following conditions must be met as well:

  • The title attribute is present and has a non-empty value.
  • The img element is in a figure element that contains a figcaption element

that contains content other than inter-element whitespace.

  • The img element is part of the only paragraph directly in its section, and is the only img element without an alt attribute in its section, and its section has an associated heading.

Bug Description

The third bullet: "The img element is part of the only paragraph directly in its section, and is the only img element without an alt attribute in its section, and its section has an associated heading" seems to be an unnecessary loophole for not providing a text alternative as well as unnecessarily complex for tools and authors.

Is there any rationale for this loophole?

Please remove this exception.

HTML5 Issue and Change Proposal

This is associated with HTML TRACKER ISSUE-31:

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/31

Change Proposal - Replace img Guidance for Conformance Checkers:

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126