[whatwg] was The <pic> element, now about alt text

[David Singer]

On Jun 3, 2012, at 23:02 , Anselm Hannemann Web Development wrote:
> 
> Sure but why? It is much more clearly to use the alt-attribute than using text between container and child elements IMO.
> 
>>> Alt-text should always be in an attribute and this would also be easier for screenreaders etc.

This may be an aside to the current discussion, but actually I think that user-presentable text should *never* be in an attribute.  Why?

1) 'ML' stands for markup language; what's in the markup should be information about the content, not the content itself.

2) More important, when text is in an attribute, it's not amenable to markup. You want to style the alt text, or associate it with a CSS class, or tag it with a language, script, or writing direction, or…?  It needs to be in the content, and then that's all possible.

I realize that changing where alt text is for existing elements would be…problematic…but I don't think we should propagate the error further.

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.