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Mandate in HTML5 that all conformance checkers and validators must refer to the appropriate WCAG document and section that provides remedial guidance to authors whenever text alternatives are unknown or missing.
I think the spec shouldn't micromanage the user interface design of any class of products--including conformance checkers. Conformance checker vendors should be able to compete on the quality of the user experience of reporting conformance errors. That is, I think this bug should be resolved as WONTFIX.
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: As Henri says, we try to avoid defining UI requirements. I would recommend putting such a requirement in a UAAG analogue for validators.
The bug-triage sub-team agrees with Henri's comment but is bringing it forward to the accessibility task force to achieve consensus.
Related Email References: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Apr/0109.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Apr/0110.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Apr/0127.html Full Thread: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Apr/thread.html#msg89
The Task Force has decided that this bug is beyond the scope of the WG. http://www.w3.org/2013/05/09-html-a11y-minutes.html