Adrian, all I meant by the Flickr case study reference was that the argument is "the general user doesn't know how to do it anyway" as an excuse to reduce the accessibility of alt. I agree with what you are saying totally, That's actually a very dangerous argument, the generalist one. Because we have to accept that by that account "most people don't write valid anything". There really needs to be a separation in that argument between "real developers" and "the junk that will exist regardless". Yet, for some reason, this generalist argument keeps popping up. IMO if Flickr can't meet a bar that's a their business case not our excuse to dumb down to meet their current ability. They should be looking at altering their software, where appropriate, rather than dumbing down a spec to get them under the bar as valid anything. Especially at the cost of accessibility features that currently have support and are of benefit now.

While admittedly off the topic, the broad statement about it being easier for computers to interpret the current web than for humans to author strict syntax is also a kind of easily digestible generalisation. That pre-supposes a whole lot of simplicity into the solution, and simply put computers aren't the magic answer. Its much easier for 2 computers to share information if the languages are the same on each end, and their is semantic meaning. Its naive to think that garbage on either end will result in a clear conversation (even for humans).

As for HTML5, I don't think it can be all things to all people. Its probably the way forward at this point because its progressing with support. Like you though, I don't see it as healthy to drop accessibility features in the name of the 'generalist' argument. I apologise if my sarcasm didn't come over that well, it was very early when I wrote the comment.

Yes semantics are extremely important, too. Which goes back to what my computer talking to computer conversation was about. We need semantics to make that happen. Computers are really pretty dumb so if they have to think and filter and guess then that's all more code and overhead and complexity, is my point.

I agree too, Faulkner, Clark, Lemon and Edwards are right. I've agreed with that for a long time. Sometimes vocally. But like you say, my comment was slightly to the left of tangent, and I apologise.

I just get a little miffed when generalisations get thrown around in the HTML5 conversation about reasons to clip accessibility features.

Generalisations like "most users" and "computers can...". I do see partly where Ian is coming from but I don't agree with the arguments put forward in that way. Flickr is NO excuse to reduce the current accessibility benefit of alt. How? Again I come back to their argument about "most users" or "most people". Most? Most people don't care, and we shouldn't be reducing the experience of some actual web users because "some developers" don't know and aren't willing to learn to code properly. Again, sarcastically Apathetica 1.0 for dumb developers! It's a call of frustration.

If that makes sense. Again, sorry for sidetracking the comments. I'll try to zip it and rant on my own bandwidth lol... regards... Steven Clark