Change Proposal: Explicitly state, "For guidance on accessibility requirements for text alternatives authors should consult WCAG 2.0" and link to WCAG 2.0

Editors: Laura Carlson (laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com)

Date: June 22, 2010.

Summary

This change proposal modifies the image element section [1]. It adds the sentence:

"For guidance on accessibility requirements for text alternatives authors should consult WCAG 2.0" and adds a link to WCAG 2.0

This change proposal helps resolve HTML ISSUE-???: WCAG Reference Issue to be Raised.

Rationale

• Aids accessibility education as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) provides guidance on the topic of text alternatives. WAI develops guidelines which are widely regarded as the international standard for Web accessibility [2]. WCAG defines how to make Web content more accessible to people with disabilities [3].
• Clarifies that WCAG is the W3C's accessibility authority that authors should consult for text alternatives.
• WCAG provides dedicated Principles, Guidelines, Success Criteria, and Technique documents [4] that are vetted for accessibility.
• As one study indicates, users prefer embedded reference links into the body of a document instead of lumping them all into one section. They believed that embedding the links within a document made it easier to navigate, easier to recognize key information, easier to follow the main idea of the passages, and promoted comprehension. [5]
• Could help in the goal of modularizing W3C documents[6] as some information in the img section may be covered in WAI documents. It may aid in alleviating duplication of effort and double maintenance.
• Including this change is in accord with Accessibility Coordination Group's "Consensus Resolutions on Text alternatives in HTML 5". [7]

Details

Add a Sentence

Add the following sentence to the image element section.

For guidance on accessibility requirements for text alternatives authors should consult WCAG 2.0.

Impact

Positive Effects

• Please refer to all of the bullets in the rationale section.

Negative Effects

• Adds one sentence to the spec.

Conformance Classes Changes

• None

Risks

• None

References

• http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/text-level-semantics.html#the-img-element [1]
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/about.html [2]
• http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#intro [3]
• http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#intro-layers-guidance [4]
• http://www.surl.org/usabilitynews/32/links.asp [5]
• http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/0871.html [6]
• http://www.w3.org/2009/06/Text-Alternatives-in-HTML5 [7]

Related Bug

• Bug 9241: Explicitly state, "For guidance on accessibility requirements for text alternatives authors should consult WCAG 2.0" and link to WCAG 2.0

Detailed Three Year History of the Alt Issue

A detailed three year history of the issue includes issue description, time line, proposed solutions, rationale - pros and cons, research, advice from WAI, use cases, policies/guidelines/law, and email threads:

• Short Text Alternatives on <img>