Re: Alt Text for A Key Part of the Content

On 8/28/07 11:04 AM, "Ben Boyle" <benjamins.boyle@gmail.com> wrote:

> There's plenty of good advice out there. I read this article soday
that seems
> particularly 
> good:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/revivinganorexicwebwriting

For
> example:
[quote]
Given a photograph of the University of Texas tower, for
> example,
simple alt text that says, "UT tower" might not be terribly useful
> to
someone who has never seen the tower, though it may be useful to
someone
> who knows what the tower looks like. But alt text that says,
"Evening view of
> UT tower aglow after a big Texas win" is better,
because it is meaningful to
> anyone, sighted or not‹it projects pride,
kinship, tradition. It conveys very
> particular emotions using
revealing language.
[/quote]

cheers
Ben

The average user is not going to spend the time to come up with such an
elegant description just for it to never be seen by anyone because it's used
as alt text instead of a visible text description above or below the image.

I've had experience with people who never entered anything into the
"alternate text" input field. It wasn't until after a redesign where it was
renamed to "description" and we used the description text as a caption under
the image that they started actually using it.

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Received on Thursday, 30 August 2007 14:03:51 UTC