Re: Investigating the proposed alt attribute recommendations in HTML 5

On 8/29/07, Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
> If the developers of flickr.com or Photobucket were to implement the
> recommendations regarding the omission of the alt attribute within the
> current HTML 5 draft what are the potential effects upon the accessibility
> of the sites for users of assistive technology such as screen readers?
>
> Investigating the proposed alt attribute recommendations in HTML 5 -
> http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/articles/altinhtml5.html

One of the conclusions is that accessibility is harmed by omitting
@alt because JAWS will instead read the filename (or the entire @src
attribute).  Is it helpful that JAWS does this at all?  Is it ever
helpful for JAWS to simply spout out the filename of an image instead
of simply announcing "Embedded Graphic" for the image with omitted
@alt.  Regardless of conformance requirements, I'm trying to
understand why JAWS is doing that.

-- 
Jon Barnett

Received on Wednesday, 29 August 2007 21:57:00 UTC