[Bug 12587] New: AT shouldn't see img@alt="" and img@role=presentation as 100% synonyms

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12587

           Summary: AT shouldn't see img@alt="" and img@role=presentation
                    as 100% synonyms
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
               URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/html-aapi/#api-role
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Keywords: a11y
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P3
         Component: HTML a11y APIs (editor: Steve Faulkner, Cynthia
                    Shelley)
        AssignedTo: faulkner.steve@gmail.com
        ReportedBy: xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


The HTML to Platform Accessibility APIs implementation guide requires AT to
treat

    <img alt="" src=i> 

as 100% the same as

    <img role=presentation src=i >

But such a change is likely to make many pages less accessible to AT users.
Examples:

Example 1:  In this example, VoiceOver will contstruct a link text from the
href URL.
<a href="./">
     <img src=i role=presentation title="Lorem Ipsum">
</a>

Example 2: In this example, VoiceOVer will use @title as link text.
<a href="./">
     <img src=i title="Lorem Ipsum">
</a>

Thus, as you can see, by making the empty img@alt="" a synonym for
img@role=presentation, the treatment of existing web pages will be affected. 

Another problem of seeing them as 100% synonyms is: who wins if both are
present and @alt e.g. is non-empty? If they are not  100% synonyms, then it is
easier to see why role=presentation wins.

Also, I believe there is a usecase for images with non-empty @alt text which
nevertheless are presentational. (E.g. the @alt text could be purely
decorational - to reflect that the image itself  is purely some decorational
symbols. )

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Received on Tuesday, 3 May 2011 02:36:20 UTC