- From: Thomas Higginbotham <thomas@thomashigginbotham.com>
- Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:14:36 -0400
- To: public-html@w3.org
I believe it to be very relevant. For example, if my sighted friend tells me to click the image of the flag with stars and a large, red asterisk in the left corner, and the alt text simply says, "Australia", I might not have a clue what my friend is talking about. Alt text should accurately describe the image to non-sighted users unless the image has no purpose other than decoration. Using "Australia" as a tool-tip with the title attribute is perfectly fine since that is the purpose of the title attribute. It seems that many people are confusing alt and title. James Graham wrote: > > Philip Taylor (Webmaster) wrote: >> >> None the less, I prefer to defer to Gregory who >> can provide first-hand insight into whether >> "Australia" as ALT text might be sufficient in >> certain contexts, and -- if so -- how we might >> go about codifying those contexts so as to ensure >> that the specification leaves no doubt as to >> the context(s) in which such terse ALT text >> could justifiably be used. > > Imagine context like this: > > <p>Visit The XYZ Company's site for your country:</p> > <ul> > <li><a href="uk.xyz.com"><img src="uk.png" alt="United Kingdom"></a> > <li><a href="us.xyz.com"><img src="us.png" alt="United States"></a> > <li><a href="au.xyz.com"><img src="au.png" alt="Australia"></a> > </ul> > > In this case it is strictly irrelevant what the image au.png depicts; > it could be the word "Australia" written in the XYZ company's > corporate typeface, it could be the Australian flag, it could be > anything; the only important fact is that a sighted user with access > to the images would identify it as the image corresponding to the > choice for Australia. Therefore the role of the alt text, as an > alternative to the image, is to allow a user without access to the > image to make the same identification. The single word "Australia" is > enough to fulfill this task; any more detail about the exact content > of the image is unnecessary. > -- Thomas Higginbotham
Received on Thursday, 23 August 2007 16:17:26 UTC