Please refer to the "Email Exceptions" and "Addressing Business Needs" sections of the "Replace img guidance for conformance checkers" Change Proposal [1] for more details. This bug is part of a larger issue that should be considered comprehensively.

Thank you.

[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126

This is associated with HTML TRACKER ISSUE-31
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/31

Related E-mail
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueAltAttribute#head-ab4f8bc9cf68fad8dd7cc743ed0c2687eac176fd

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Apr/thread.html#msg315

The full issue and is detailed at:
Omitting Short Text Alternatives on <img>
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueAltAttribute

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.

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: I disagree with the premise of this bug (that exceptions of this nature are beyond the scope of HTML5). I don't know what relevance the scope of WCAG2 has to this bug, and I don't understand what "policy level" means.

I couldn't tell from the links to the change proposal exactly what points were relevant to this bug. In particular, this section doesn't seem to have anything to do with businesses, which were referenced several times in the parts of the change proposal cited.

Please reopen the bug if there was something there that I missed, and include all the relevant text in this bug report.

Adding TrackerIssue Keyword.

Private communication exception 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

The Private communication email exceptions in the current editor's draft are beyond the scope of both HTML5 and WCAG 2.0 and should be addressed at a policy level rather than the specification level. This rule digresses too far into business-process issues.

This email exceptions rule makes assumptions about the lifetime of messages and takes a static approach to disability. Emails get forwarded and the degree of disability may vary over time. The intended recipient isn't always the actual recipient. The intended recipient may well be able to view images, but rendering them on a device unable to render images or have images switched off to save on downloads. 

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

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: 

(In reply to comment #5)
> The Private communication email exceptions in the current editor's draft are
> beyond the scope of both HTML5 and WCAG 2.0 and should be addressed at a policy
> level rather than the specification level. This rule digresses too far into
> business-process issues.

I still don't understand what "policy level" means or the relevance of businesses here.


> This email exceptions rule makes assumptions about the lifetime of messages and
> takes a static approach to disability. Emails get forwarded and the degree of
> disability may vary over time. The intended recipient isn't always the actual
> recipient. The intended recipient may well be able to view images, but
> rendering them on a device unable to render images or have images switched off
> to save on downloads. 

It would be futile to argue that if my 6 year old nephew sends me a private e-mail including a picture of his birthday party, he should include alternative text for the photo just in case one day I go blind and am looking through my e-mail and am sad that I can't remember what the photo depicted. We have to apply some level of realism here. It's one thing to argue that people should be required to provide alternative text when they're publishing content on the public Web — people might grumble and be frustrated at writing replacement text, but they'll understand that it's the right thing to do. However, we are never going to get traction claiming that private communications also need alternative text. We will, in fact, merely be laughed at. There is simply no point putting requirements in the spec that most people are not going to think should _theoretically_ be followed.

(As a user of a non-graphical mail client, I have to say that I really don't care if my friends include alternative text — if they send me a photo, I'm going to go out of my way to download the photo and view it. I'm not going to read the alternative text.)

Change Proposals:
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20090126
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20100706
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20100707
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20100504
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ImgElement20100510

The bug-triage sub-team doesn't think this is a accessibility task force priority, no a11yTF keyword required.

Working Group Decision: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Apr/0451.html

   * The presence of aria-labelledby does not make missing alt conforming.
   * The presence of role=presentation does not make missing alt conforming.
   * The presence of <meta name=generator> makes missing alt conforming.
   * Use of private communications does not, in itself, make missing alt conforming.
   * The presence of title makes missing alt conforming.
   * The presence of figcaption makes missing alt conforming.

Checked in as WHATWG revision r6027.
Check-in comment: apply wg decision (private communication exception)
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=6026&to=6027

(note, there's a publication pipeline problem that's making the w3c copy not update, so this change is not yet visible — it'll become visible as soon as the publication issue is fixed)