- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:56:25 +0000 (UTC)
- To: www-archive@w3.org
ISSUE-31 ======== SUMMARY There is no problem and the proposed remedy is to change nothing. RATIONALE There is no problem. Another change proposal suggests removing all advice for authors writing alternative text, moving it to other documents. Historically, we have tried that (HTML4 had virtually no advice) and we have found it to be a poor solution: authors assume it is easy to write alternative text and thus do not attempt to learn anything about it. We need to try having such information as "in your face" as possible. Having additional documents would be additionally helpful, but does not preclude having detailed advice in the HTML spec itself. A second change proposal suggests allowing otherwise non-conforming content to be conforming based on the presence of ARIA attributes. However, this is a layering violation and a language design error. ARIA is intended to only affect accessibility API mappings (and thus ATs). Features such as alt="", however, are relevant far beyond AT users, for example to text browsers. It would be wrong, therefore, to make solutions that exclusively affect accessibility APIs be a suitable alternative for solutions that are necessary for UAs that do not use accessibility APIs. DETAILS Change nothing. IMPACT POSITIVE EFFECTS Having authoring advice will help advise authors. Having conformance requirements independent of AT APIs will ensure that authors are encouraged to write documents that are optimal even for users that do not use ATs. NEGATIVE EFFECTS None. CONFORMANCE CLASS CHANGES None. RISKS None. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 06:56:53 UTC