RE: Alt text not required? [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

I’m for the status quo

‘ALT’ has been around so long experienced web developers know its purpose and function.  ‘Beginner programmers’ should have a solid understanding of basic html before they begin  creating applications that require them to make use of ARIA.
Most reputable authoring tools ensure that at least a ‘null’ alt gets included when an image is inserted using WYSIWYG based tools.  While having a null alt is technically a failure if the image is conveying important information, surely having assistive technology ‘skip’ over an image as should occur in the presence of null alt is preferable to making someone listen to “image + file name” when alt attribute is absent.

How much additional work would makers of assistive technology need to undertake to ensure an appropriate ‘null’ title (or aria-label,etc) allows users to bypass ‘decorative’ images.

I suspect this change is proposed to assist makers of web applications that may not have ‘decorative’ images, rather that the thought is this will make things easier for programmers who want to use images as buttons.

However, I think the <img> element needs to be used consistently regardless of whether we are talking about a standard web page on to which an author using a CMS or WYSIWYG editor inserts a photo (etc) or a web application developed by someone doing everything in the code.

If we agree that elements need to use attributes consistently, and ‘title’ (or one of the other proposed alternatives) became the default attribute that provides the text equivalent then that would mean Authoring Tools would also need to be reworked...at more expense.

I really think that educating beginner programmers on the correct usage of the <img> element would be a cheaper option.

Jennifer Bruce
Australia

From: Arch, Andrew [mailto:Andrew.Arch@finance.gov.au]
Sent: Monday, 25 November 2013 9:14 AM
To: Raven CALAIS; danny.thomas@deewr.gov.au; nicholas.miller@humanservices.gov.au; Bruce, Jenny
Subject: FW: Alt text not required? [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

UNCLASSIFIED

FYI – you may want to respond

Andrew

UNCLASSIFIED

From: Andrew Arch [mailto:andrew.arch@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, 24 November 2013 4:37 PM
To: Arch, Andrew;
Subject: Alt text not required?

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2013Nov/0052.html


Sent from Andrew's iPhone




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