4 ms·

This seems interesting but I'm having a hard time figuring out what exactly he is talking about. He starts out talking about the alt tag and then I start to los

by tkahn6 16y ago

This seems interesting but I'm having a hard time figuring out what exactly he is talking about. He starts out talking about the alt tag and then I start to lose him. Can anyone clarify or give some context?

kingofspain 16y ago
I thought it was just me, not having long woken up. I've read it a couple of times now so I'm either thick (fair chance) or it's a little confusing.
risotto 16y ago
Nope! Makes no sense to me either. Not envious of the people in the specification space. Personally, I just wanna hack!
matthewsimon 16y ago
There's recently been a round of debate about whether the alt attribute for media (eg, <img alt="Foo">) should remain required or could become optional. As I understand it, some web page creators say "some of our images don't have good logical, human-readable alt text, so why make us put in alt attributes with crappy made-up values", and other people argue that it is worth the extra effort to improve accessibility. (No doubt I've butchered both sides of the argument, but that's what I was able to take away from it.) See http://blog.whatwg.org/omit-alt http://blog.whatwg.org/omit-alt for an argument in favor of making it optional, and http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/articles/altinhtml5.html http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/articles/altinhtml5.h... for it being required, or http://juicystudio.com/article/requiring-alt-attribute-html5.php http://juicystudio.com/article/requiring-alt-attribute-html5... for a list of pros and cons. The two standards groups hosting the draft HTML specs appear to have different centers of gravity with regard to this issue, and to be making increasingly snippy comments back and forth about the other's handling of the dispute.
lambda 16y ago
This is pretty much a standard Shelley Powers rant. Fairly incoherent, more about making the process "fair", making sure she gets heard, and ensuring that people pay attention to political constituencies that she likes rather than that anything actually gets done.

by tkahn6 16y ago

kingofspain 16y ago

I thought it was just me, not having long woken up. I've read it a couple of times now so I'm either thick (fair chance) or it's a little confusing.

risotto 16y ago

Nope! Makes no sense to me either. Not envious of the people in the specification space. Personally, I just wanna hack!

matthewsimon 16y ago

There's recently been a round of debate about whether the alt attribute for media (eg, <img alt="Foo">) should remain required or could become optional. As I understand it, some web page creators say "some of our images don't have good logical, human-readable alt text, so why make us put in alt attributes with crappy made-up values", and other people argue that it is worth the extra effort to improve accessibility. (No doubt I've butchered both sides of the argument, but that's what I was able to take away from it.) See http://blog.whatwg.org/omit-alt http://blog.whatwg.org/omit-alt for an argument in favor of making it optional, and http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/articles/altinhtml5.html http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/articles/altinhtml5.h... for it being required, or http://juicystudio.com/article/requiring-alt-attribute-html5.php http://juicystudio.com/article/requiring-alt-attribute-html5... for a list of pros and cons. The two standards groups hosting the draft HTML specs appear to have different centers of gravity with regard to this issue, and to be making increasingly snippy comments back and forth about the other's handling of the dispute.

lambda 16y ago

This is pretty much a standard Shelley Powers rant. Fairly incoherent, more about making the process "fair", making sure she gets heard, and ensuring that people pay attention to political constituencies that she likes rather than that anything actually gets done.