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Re: Question about image in the alt attribute

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Aug 2, 2014 11:36PM

Jonathan Avila wrote:
>
> [Jared wrote] But the idea that we should change the purpose of
> "alternative text" to be "alternative text plus some other stuff that
> some users might benefit from" is very dangerous.
>
> I never suggested anything of the sort. I'm only asking for the
> image's replacement alternative text to easily be displayed. Currently
> you have to install plug-ins to access this on the desktop and on
> mobile devices these plug-ins don't exist.
>

Then this is a problem with the platform and user-agents. Since mobile
browsers really don't support a plug-in architecture, it would seem that
filing a bug with the browser vendors would be the next step.

I will suggest that this is, in many ways, the same problem that we have
with @longdesc (basically Jonathan wants an @shortdesc :-) ) - we need/want
that user-agents can be user-configured to visibly expose data that is in
the DOM, but not natively "visible" on screen (i.e. the default is "off" but
can be turned on by the individual user). To my mind there is no reason why
a browser could not provide these types of user-configuration settings to
signal this information to the individual end user, but it would take
convincing the browser vendors that the need exists, and is prevalent enough
to warrant the work. Here again, filing bugs would help kick the process
off, and at Mozilla at least, the general public can in theory "vote-up"
bugs.

JF