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Adnan Maolood me at adnano.co
Sun Feb 28 15:06:48 GMT 2021
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Recently there was some discussion regarding the accessiblity ofpreformatted text lines. This proposal aims to address those concerns bysimply clarifying the purpose of alt text.
During the discussion John Cowan said:
I think that most preformatted blocks are meant to be readable. How about
an option to hide preformatted blocks if and only if they have alt text?
That, plus social pressure to actually *provide* alt text, even if it's
just "ascii art" or "ascii art kittens", should do it.
https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/2021/005633.html
I agree with John. I believe that a clarification to the specificationis the best way to resolve this issue.
Alt text should serve one and only one purpose: provide an alternativetext representation of preformatted text. If a block of preformattedtext does not need an alternative text representation (i.e., it can beread aloud as is), then it should not have any alt text.
Section 5.4.3 of the Gemini specification currently states:
Any text following the leading "```" of a preformat toggle line which toggles
preformatted mode on MAY be interpreted by the client as "alt text" pertaining
to the preformatted text lines which follow the toggle line. Use of alt text
is at the client's discretion, and simple clients may ignore it. Alt text is
recommended for ASCII art or similar non-textual content which, for example,
cannot be meaningfully understood when rendered through a screen reader or
usefully indexed by a search engine. Alt text may also be used for computer
source code to identify the programming language which advanced clients may
use for syntax highlighting.
I propose that the final sentence be removed, and that MAY be replacedwith MUST:
Any text following the leading "```" of a preformat toggle line which toggles
preformatted mode on MUST be interpreted by the client as "alt text" pertaining
to the preformatted text lines which follow the toggle line. Use of alt text
is at the client's discretion, and simple clients may ignore it. Alt text is
recommended for ASCII art or similar non-textual content which, for example,
cannot be meaningfully understood when rendered through a screen reader or
usefully indexed by a search engine.
This would mean that should a screen reader encounter a preformatted textblock with a non-empty alt text, the alt text would be read aloud and thepreformatted block would be skipped. After all, that's what "alternativetext" is supposed to mean.