Editor of HTML5 questions need for alt text in movie poster frames

Isn't he simply questioning an assumption? (assumption being that every bit of image always needs an alternative that is not in normal flow of page)<p>Ian's often repeated naive-sounding "Why would you do that? What's the use case?" has shot down many feature requests that seemed good in theory, but weren't that useful in practice.<p>Perhaps description of the video makes description of poster redundant? Maybe one can use ARIA? Maybe media framework can extract description from the video file?<p>Even if there is a way to describe the poster, will authors actually care to do it? Will they ignore it (naively assuming blind users don't watch videos) or fill it with boilerplate?

Flagged for misleading title. How about "Editor of HTML5 questions need for alt text in movie poster frames." This would 1) be less editorializing; 2) make this a submission of a technical issue as opposed to a submission questioning Ian's competence.

"I give you a very classy example: Casablanca"<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_%28film%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_%28film%29</a><p>I had to check this out. The alt text on the images really are excellent.

There is a significant difference between the title and what's in the poster image. One commenter on the thread pointed to the Casablanca Wikipedia page.<p>The "poster" image for Casablanca has an alt text: <i>"Black-and-white film screenshot with the title of the film in fancy font. Below it is the text "A Warner Bros. - First National Picture". In the background is a crowded nightclub filled with many people."</i> If you imagine a movie being embedded in a webpage, that might be the alt text for the poster image whereas the title might be "Casablanca".

I'm not surprised that he has trouble understanding that. The 'meaning' of the poster frame isn't clear from that conversation. Does he want a description of what's being displayed in just the poster frame? How does this differ from the title of the video?<p>For example:<p>Title: Cat jumping on bed<p>Frame: Image of cat jumping towards bed<p>Video: Cat jumps toward bed and lands on it.<p>The vast majority of the time, the poster frame isn't going to be different than the title of the video.<p>Now, I agree that when it is different, there should be a way to specify an alt text for it. But to require it when it's the same as the title seems silly to me.

Wow. :( "I'm confused. Why would you (a blind user) want to know what the poster frame is? How does it affect you?"<p>That is pretty bad.<p>I think they need a group of people with disabilities to review all of the specs. There have to be many more issues like this lurking (that those with disabilities could probably already point me to).

The submission title, "Editor of HTML5 (Ian Hickson) shows poor understanding of accessibility", is unnecessarily personalizing, editorializing, and polarizing.<p>It's likely Hickson's questions, and reluctance to accept a specific proposal without more data, are a matter of seeking understanding, and working through different ideas about what the proper significance and use of a 'poster' image for video might be.<p>(A better title might be: "Debating fine points of HTML5 accessibility: video 'poster' images and alt taxt".)

This really inspired me to write meaningful alternative texts (alt) on images. Never realized how important they were to the blind.

This type of editorializing is absolutely out of line. Ian is obviously trying to understand the other side, which is more than many developers ever try to do. As a low vision user of the web since its beginnings, I have encountered site after site designed for low vision and blind users based on advice and recommendations from people with good eyesight.<p>You can't understand what a person needs unless you ask them directly. That's what Mr. Hickson is doing here.<p>And lets not forget the more important matter - videos need transcripts so that the blind <i>and</i> deaf can follow along.<p>A few days ago I asked for feedback on how I might better explain accessibility to developers over at <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1716463" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1716463</a> - issues like this are exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for. Feel free to leave comments there if you have them.

Unfortunately the SEO industry will make this a pain for all of us just like they did with stuffing image alt text in the early 2000's.