[html4all] several messages about alt
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
Mon Apr 14 00:51:12 PDT 2008
On Apr 14, 2008, at 04:58, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> Henri Sivonen 08-04-13 20.57:
>> Apr 13, 2008, at 18:33, Leif Halvard Silli:
>>> If we formalise that the first step of validation/conformance
>>> checking, namely the checking of whether images have the correct
>>> alt text and are used in the right way, if tables have summary,
>>> and so on and so forth, as a step that must be done by the author/
>>> webmaster, then your product could be allowed to check only the
>>> more formal points -
>>
>> An automated tool becomes less automated if it starts giving more
>> and more messages of the nature "Please check yourself if you are
>> violating rule foo here." If you take it to absurdity, the tool
>> should ask the user to verify the semantic correctness of the use
>> of each element and attribute.
>
> Well, I thought about it this way: If the author has "stamped" it
> himself - with regard to the not machine-checable things, then the
> validator do not need to give all those messages that you mention.
Do you mean you are arguing for validator pragmas that silence certain
validator messages?
(Note that semi-automated tools aren't useless, but they are different
tools. A semi-automated tools could display each image and its alt
side-by-side and ask the user to verify that the alternatives make
sense.)
> So no "Valid" icons from Validator.nu.
Right.
>>> The W3 HTML checker has always done a small bit of accessiblity
>>> checking , and that is part of why people want to check their
>>> pages in that validator. To offer a checker as a same kind of
>>> prestiged checker as the current W3 tool, without incorporating
>>> some basic accessibility checking, would be a bit like stealing
>>> goodwill from a wholly different kind of tool.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure I haven't advertised Validator.nu in a way that
>> stole goodwill deceptively.
>>
>> Please let me know if you find bogus claims in Validator.nu
>> documentation, UI or advertising. Unfortunately, I can't fully stop
>> people from transferring bogus impressions created by others onto
>> their preconceptions about Validator.nu.
>
> I guess I may have looked at it as "Validator 5".
I've called it "validation 2.0", but "5" is quite apt. :-)
> I now understand that it was never meant to be. However, I also
> understand/get the impression that you want your validator to be an
> example of what validator.w3.org should be.
Specifically, I think a validator should check for things that are
machine checkable but go beyond a schema formalism, and I think
handing out badges skews the motivations of users in such way that it
is better not to hand out badges.
So yes, I not only don't want Validator.nu to give out badges, but I
think badge-focusedness is bad for validators in general.
> It is very well, indeed, that you are accurate about what
> validator.nu checks for. My point was to say that people have
> expectations about what the W3 validator does.
This is partly due to past advertising of the W3C Validator:
http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=1399
Let's try to focus on what these tools are good for instead of
catering to old misconceptions about their capabilities.
--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
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