[Bug 9678] New: add rationale for providing an alt when inline description is available

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9678

           Summary: add rationale for providing an alt when inline
                    description is available
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows NT
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: alt techniques (editor: Steven Faulkner)
        AssignedTo: faulkner.steve@gmail.com
        ReportedBy: faulkner.steve@gmail.com
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html@w3.org,
                    faulkner.steve@gmail.com


anne wrote:
Admittedly I only skimmed through the document for a few minutes, so maybe I
missed the answer, but it seems that in Example 2.3 it is not explained what
the advantage of including an alternative text in the first place is. If there
is a full description it seems one could just use alt="".
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010May/0116.html

i replied:

The description is an alternative interpretation of the flowchart. if
alt="" was used the image would be removed from the accessibility tree
for AT users, which is incorrect, the image is not meaningless, it
contains information which a range of users could interpret with the
aid of the short text alternative and longer description.

The alt in this case provides an accessible name for the image that
identifies the image for users AT users. It also provides a text
alternative for users who have images turned off in their browsers, so
they can if they wish load and view the image. If alt="" was used
there would be no indication that an image was there.

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Received on Friday, 7 May 2010 09:27:07 UTC