[html4all] some reflections on @alt usage

[Joshue O Connor]

Gez Lemon wrote:
> 2008/4/28 Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve at gmail.com>:
>>  It should be noted that some of the suggestions outlined by John and
>>  myself were previously raised by Al and discussed on a thread back in
>>  February [1]:
>>
>>  [1] what's machinable [was: Re: ALT issue redux]
>>  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2008Feb/0006.html
>>  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2008Feb/0008.html
> 
> Just to add to my position on using aria-describedby and
> aria-labelledby in response to Al's original message. I think
> aria-describedby could be considered an appropriate alternative to
> longdesc when the description exists in the same page, but obviously
> not when the description is in another document. I can also see there
> may be some edge-cases when aria-labelledby may be considered a
> suitable replacement for alt. These are edge-cases, as ARIA was
> designed to bridge the accessibility gaps with the current structure
> we have. Providing alt text for images wasn't one of those gaps, as
> there is already a suitable attribute.

+ 1

josh