Add rationale or exclude role="presentation", aria-labelledby & aria-labelled attributes from alt change proposal? Help needed. (was Re: ISSUE-31 Change Proposal)

Hello everyone,

-public-html
+public-html-a11y

Maciej has asked [1] for added rationale in the alt change proposal
for role="presentation", aria-labelledby & aria-labelled attributes.

Or else he suggests excluding these three options from the proposal.

He has said what we currently have is factual description of what
these mechanisms are and what they do. But we have no reason for why
the spec should be allowed to omit alt when one of these is present.

So should I remove these options? Or does anyone have suggest text to
add to the proposal to justify these options better?

The current text in the change proposal states [2]:

QUOTE

Added Options which Address Accessibility

The language of WCAG2 allows a text alternative to be expressed in
other ways besides the alt attribute. Three cases in particular
distinguish syntax for cases, which yield more accessible content.

role="presentation" Attribute

role="presentation" programmatically conveys to assistive technology
that an image is presentational and not of interest.

aria-labelledby and aria-labelled Attributes

When the natural concise text alternative is available elsewhere on a
page the aria-labelledby and aria-labelled attributes can be an
accessible alternative for an image as it programmatically conveys
meaning to assistive technology. For example:

<h2 id="bronze">Bronze Medal</h2>
<!-- Some page content -->
<img src="bronzemedal.png" aria-labelledby="bronze">

UNQUOTE

All guidance and suggestions greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Best Regards,
Laura

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Jun/0588.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126#Added_Options_which_Address_Accessibility


On 6/23/10, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
> On Jun 23, 2010, at 11:30 AM, Laura Carlson wrote:
>
>> Hi Sam,
>>
>> I think/hope that I have now addressed the concerns that you have raised.
>> I:
>>
>> 1. Added rationale for all changes.
>> 2. Removed the reference to the paragraph-section-heading loophole, as
>> Ian indeed removed it from the spec per as requested in Bug 9217.
>> http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9217
>> I just hope it doesn't reappear in the spec.
>>
>> In addition, I updated all three of my current proposals for Issue 31.
>> So far, all together I have three proposals and possibly a fourth.
>> They are:
>>
>> 1. Replace img Guidance for Conformance Checkers. January 26, 2010.
>> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126
>> In this one I tried to incorporate WAI CG's advice.
>> http://www.w3.org/2009/06/Text-Alternatives-in-HTML5
>
>
> I still don't see any rationale given for the following three alt exemptions
> added by your change proposal:
>
> * aria-labelledby attribute present (non-empty only)
> * aria-label attribute is present (non-empty only)
> * role attribute is present and has a value of "presentation".
>
> The "Rationale" section has a factual description of what these mechanisms
> are and what they do, but as far as I can tell, no reason is given for why
> it should be allowed to omit alt when one of these is present. Please either
> add rationale for these changes or adjust the scope of the Change Proposal
> to exclude them.
>
>
> There are also rationale sections relating to a "CAPTCHA Loophole" and a
> "WebCam Loophole" which do not appear to relate to any actual changes
> proposed in the Details section. That's not as critical a problem as changes
> without rationale, but it's something you may wish to address.
>
>
> Regards,
> Maciej

On 6/23/10, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net> wrote:
> This change proposal needs to be updated both in order to provide a
> rationale for each change requested, and to reflect differences from the
> current draft of the document.
>
> As a concrete example, the proposal provides no rationale for removing
> the paragraph-section-heading "loophole" save for a pointer to a bug
> report, and the resolution of that bug report indicates that that
> condition was removed.  Looking at the current text, this condition is
> indeed no longer present:
>
> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#guidance-for-conformance-checkers
>
> Other specific examples: There is rationale given for allowing
> role="presentation", aria-label or aria-labeledby as exemptions for alt.
>
> - Sam Ruby
>
> On 02/11/2010 03:03 AM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> (+public-html)
>>
>> Hi Laura,
>>
>> I've recorded this as an additional Change Proposal for ISSUE-31:
>> http://dev.w3.org/html5/status/issue-status.html#ISSUE-031
>>
>> (I've suggested previously that you and Ian should work together to
>> identify any changes here that are uncontroversial, so they can be
>> directly applied to the HTML5 draft; I hope the two of you find some
>> time to make progress on that.)
>>
>> Regards,
>> Maciej
>>
>> On Jan 28, 2010, at 2:18 AM, Laura Carlson wrote:
>>
>>> Hello Everyone,
>>>
>>> I have drafted a Change Proposal for HTML ISSUE-31.
>>>
>>> Summary:
>>> The current guidance for conformance checkers for Section 4.8.2.1 the
>>> img element is unclear and does not implement WAI CG's advice on the
>>> validation of short text alternatives. This change proposal replaces
>>> the current guidance with clear guidance that lists all required short
>>> text alternative options that exist to be considered valid. It enables
>>> automatic validators to programmatically detect the presence or
>>> absence of text alternatives.
>>>
>>> Full proposal is at:
>>> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126
>>>
>>> Ideas for improvement are most welcome.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Laura
>>> --
>>> Laura L. Carlson
--
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Thursday, 24 June 2010 08:04:26 UTC