RE: User Testing of Accessiblity Features

Debi Orton wrote:
> Some users wanted to know what EVERY image was so that they could 
> be sure they weren't missing information.  Others wanted only 
> meaningful images described.

I've had similar experience, it's somewhat akin to the
hardcore-usability vs holistic-experience divide. 

> We proposed an additional attribute (two values only) for
> the img element to indicate whether the image was informational or
> just eye candy.

Surely that would be a null alt? ATs can then decide how they deal with
images that have null alts, which is often by ignoring them currently.

The issue at hand is not spacers, but content images that do not have
useful alts, and no realistic means of adding them.

I generally agree with Andrew, it's difficult to assess by usability
testing, although on this point:
> This is very important for linked images, but of questionable value
for 
> images that are not."

I think a lot of images in this scenario would be linked, often to
larger versions of scaled-down images. It would be difficult to
distinguish useful from not useful on that basis.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

-- 
Alastair Campbell         |  Director of User Experience

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Received on Tuesday, 28 August 2007 16:26:20 UTC