Andy
WAI has a preference for what is called 'equivalence' - the notion that one
web page should work for everyone and the place to provide the alternative
versions is on the same page, using a cascading system that goes down from
ritzy multimedia to text ... This idea comes from the communities with
special needs and it is more inclusive of those who are choosing, for
whatever reason, to use different displays.
The proposal now on the table is that a standard is needed for description
of images and it might as well be supportive and derivative of the DC work
as go off somewhere else. Blind communities have developed good styles for
descriptions of images, to 'hear' images, and the existing standards show
how to describe images so they are meaningful to those who cannot view them.
This work, which is not new, will also assist when those of us who can see,
still want descriptions instead of downloaded images, eg because we are
using our phones.
The strangeness for DC in this proposal is that it would be describing the
bits of a single entity, rather than a single entity, and the DC rules would
therefore be stretched a little. Seems to me like a really good reason to
make this change!
Liddy
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