Re: Alt is not a description (was Re: when to use longdesc for images)

In reality, for some reason, you can also still get the image name when 
either alt="" or alt=" " are used.  I suggest instead that something nice be 
placed in the alt tag such as alt=***" or alt=---" or perhaps it wouuld be 
interesting to put some non speakable character in as an alt tag then we 
would hopefully hear nothing.

Johnnie Apple Seed

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew J. Giustino" <mjg@giustiweb.com>
To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 9:12 AM
Subject: Re: Alt is not a description (was Re: when to use longdesc for 
images)



David Dorward stated:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The prose suggests giving a description of images which are
decorative. Why? What benefit does it bring to users to know that
there is a "Drawing of a house" somewhere in a document if they cannot
see it and the only purpose of the image is to _look_ nice?"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


That would be a good example to include a blank "alt" attribute ( alt="" ).

A reason to include a blank attribute is due to the fact that
some screen readers will read the image's file name ( ie; image.jpg ) if 
"alt"
is excluded from your code.

I have seen MANY examples where gif images were used for bullets and there 
was NO "alt"
included. So while reading the page the screen reader also read out loud 
"bullet.gif",
"bullet.gif", "bullet.gif", "bullet.gif", etc" .

As stated this could have been avoided if the webmaster simply included 
alt=""
so that the screen reader would not read the file name.


Matthew J. Giustino
mjg@giustiweb.com

Received on Tuesday, 21 December 2004 14:36:12 UTC