[whatwg] @generator-unable-to-provide-required-alt, figure with figcaption

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2013-06-02 20:21, Martin Janecke wrote:

> While I can imagine why an accessibility evangelist would want a
> conformance-checker-silencer to be as unattractive to use as
> possible, that really defeats its purpose, if it also deters code
> generator programmers.

The purpose presented is "to avoid markup generators from being 
pressured into replacing the error of omitting the alt attribute with 
the even more egregious error of providing phony alternative text". This 
is rather speculative, and it seems to lead to various attempts that are 
more or less self-contradictory.

Lack of alt attribute is not a mortal sin, but neither should it be 
accepted when accompanied with special incantations. It is simply an 
error to be reported. Validators are being improved to let users silence 
errors by type. This should be enough to deal with the issue.

Authors of generators always have the option of generating things like 
alt="(an image)", which can hardly be worse than lack of alt attribute.

Yucca