WHATWG Weekly: Week of April 25
Dimitri Glazkov asked a question about pseudo classes for state changes with the audio and video elements so that designers/developers could style the devices without having to listen for events.
Discussion continued on a question that Justin Karneges had about microformats, microdata, and custom data attributes. A point was made in the discussion about not using custom data attributes (data-*) for document interchange, as these are for in-page development, only.
The HTML5 editor, Ian Hickson, made a change to the documentation for video and audio, noting that both elements will accept audio and video content. He's also done more tweaking related to the Media Controller.
In the W3C, RDFa API and RDFa 1.1 Primer Drafts were updated and Web Applications WG published four drafts: WebSocket API, Indexed Database API, File API: Writer, and File API: Directories and System.
The CSS WG published a Call for Review for the CSS 2.1 Proposed Recommendation. The group also published an update of the CSS3 Speech draft.
Dominique Hazael-Massieux posted a note in the HTML WG that the Device APIs and Policy WG would like feedback on a new approach for HTML Media Capture.
The W3C co-chairs posted a possible survey for HTML5 licenses, seeking feedback from the HTML WG.
The W3C co-chairs also published three decisions related to two issues: Issue 31 and Issue 80. Both of these issues have to do with alternative text.
The first decision was related to the requirements section for alternative image text. The co-chairs decided on the change proposal to keep the requirements section in the HTML5 document.
The second decision was about the text used in the img element section of the HTML spec. The co-chairs decided on the following text:
An img element represents an image.
The image given by the src attribute is the embedded content; the value of the alt attribute provides equivalent content for those who cannot process images or who have image loading disabled.
The last decision had to do with alternative text validation. The co-chairs decided in favor of a morphing between a couple of change proposals, resulting in the following validation criteria:
- The presence of aria-labelledby does not make missing alt conforming.
- The presence of role=presentation does not make missing alt conforming.
- The presence of <meta name=generator> makes missing alt conforming.
- Use of private communications does not, in itself, make missing alt conforming.
- The presence of title makes missing alt conforming.
- The presence of figcaption makes missing alt conforming.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and offer my personal opinion that it's simpler just to remember to provide alt text.
In the news this week were discussions about Apple and Google auto-logging location history on the iPhone and Android. Appropriately enough, Philippe Le Hégaret posted his position paper for an upcoming presentation at Web Tracking & User Privacy.