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Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 08/05/06 20:27
On Fri, 4 Aug 2006, mbstevens wrote:
> On Fri, 04 Aug 2006 22:50:49 +0100, Alan J. Flavell wrote:
>
> > You have three attributes of the img tag at your mercy for offering
> > these various items. I say use them according to the guidelines, so
> > that a fair range of users' wishes can be accommodated without
> > upsetting those whose demands are different.
>
> And I agree with all that. URL of the guidelines you are using?
Well, that's a hard one for me. The guidelines that I try to follow
are chiefly in my head: but I reckon confidently that they accord with
the definitions in the HTML specifications, and with the letter and
the intention of the WAI Content guidelines (version 1, at least), as
well as being in good accordance with the stated needs and
requirements of quite a number of blind users (except a few cases
which are mutually contradictory, and really could not be both
fullfilled).
By the way, there is a certain dependence on client agents providing
support for the techniques used. But HTML4 has been on the record for
nearly a decade: for those who need longdesc, it would surely not be
too much to ask for then to select a browser which supported it?
So now where do we go. If I take the trouble to try to set down the
principles and guidelines as I understand them, it'd be a rich source
for the inveterate nit-pickers, who are always keen to miss the
underlying principles if at all possible by chiselleling away at any
possible nit - often enough nits that they themselves created, for no
other reason than to shoot them down.
But I guess I could do it.
Most of my web-published materials in this area, as you may know, are
getting a bit curled at the edges, since they concentrate so strongly
on the alt attribute (which was all that was available at the time it
was started), and only mention title= and longdesc= in passing,
really. http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/alt/ and especially
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/alt/alt-text.html
Whatever you may think about Hixie's views on this and that, it's
certainly worth reading his article, and thinking about what it means.
http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/alttext
Jukka Korpela has some materials on the topic, as google has no
difficulty in pointing out. As usual, what is there is well
researched. But, like mine, it seemed to concentrate more on the alt=
attribute than the other matters.
So, where do we go from here?
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