[whatwg] Alt text authoring Re: Conformance for Mail clients

[Kristof Zelechovski]

It seems you should replace all embedded content images with links to
download them as stand-alone resources if you want to be strictly conformant
with the "images are an alternative of text" theory.  I am not particularly
happy with this method because I would have to use a graphic processor to
add a caption to such an image.  While it can be done using a script, even
if the caption depends on the content language, it is a highly nonstandard
trick.  And you cannot easily copy such a caption as text without using OCR,
which is also possible but equally uncommon and cumbersome.
The alternative of embedding images as objects is unrealistic given
Microsoft's current stance on the subject.
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org
[mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Henri Sivonen
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 11:44 AM
To: Andrew Sidwell
Cc: WHATWG List
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Alt text authoring Re: Conformance for Mail clients

Indeed. It is the obvious effect of trying to factor unrealistic  
ideals into conformance requirements. The harm-minimizing fix is to  
concede that you cannot force people to provide alt if they don't  
want to and make alt optional for the purposes of document conformance.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/