Update 08/08/09
What the King of HTML5 giveth, he taketh away. The use of { } is now HTML5 history.
You can wonder at the greatness of his latest proclamations of altness here: Requirements for providing text to act as an alternative for images.
update end.
After much data crunching Of ‘billions of web pages’, in his infinite wisdom the King of HTML5 has given us a whole new way of using the alt attribute in HTML5:
<Hixie> i think i might make alt=”” required and say that when you don’t know what the image is, you have to say what kind of image it is (e.g. “uploaded image”, “photo”, “thumbnil”, or whatever) and put that in braces in the alt=”” attribute, as in alt=”{photo}”
The results of this can now be found in the W3C HTML5 draft . I myself have not had time as yet to fully digest his latest proclamation. On the face of it, the new way does not comform to WCAG 2.0 guidance, but much of what the previous versions of the draft stated didn’t either. As is the modus operendi of the editor, not co-operative exchange occured with WAI prior to the changes even though the HTML WG charter clearly states:
The HTML Working Group will cooperate with the Web Accessibility Initiative to ensure that the deliverables will satisfy accessibility requirements.
The editor was clearly cognisant of the fact that collaboration was sought within the HTML WG and the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative), but chose once again to impose his ideas on the specification without even a sniff of consultation. Consensus and collaboration not confrontation, is what is required to make the next generation of HTML one that works for all.
It must be said that the editor is not fully responsible for the farcical nature of the The HTML WG process. W3C process is ridden rough shod because nobody within the W3C is prepared to stand up for the claimed process. Any thoughts on why?
