[Bug 14150] New: I am a photographer as well as a hand-coding web designer. One thing that frustrates me is the duplicity between alt="" and title="" for photographs and photographers. For instance: <img class="thumbnail" alt="David Kyles" title="David Kyles Shock and Awe

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=14150

           Summary: I am a photographer as well as a hand-coding web
                    designer. One thing that frustrates me is the
                    duplicity between alt="" and title="" for photographs
                    and photographers. For instance: <img
                    class="thumbnail" alt="David Kyles" title="David Kyles
                    Shock and Awe
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: Other
               URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#top
        OS/Version: other
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P3
         Component: HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: contributor@whatwg.org
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


Specification: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
Multipage: http://www.whatwg.org/C#top
Complete: http://www.whatwg.org/c#top

Comment:
I am a photographer as well as a hand-coding web designer. One thing that
frustrates me is the duplicity between alt="" and title="" for photographs and
photographers.

For instance:


<img class="thumbnail" alt="David Kyles" title="David Kyles Shock and Awe"
src="http://files.casuals.us/ybp/2011/1-29/Small/DSC_4320.JPG" />

I wish I didn't have to type David Kyles twice.

This is quick summary of the problem:

1. Search engines ignore the title. (I have verified this because title tags
for photos up for several years never show as results in Google images, but
keywords contained in alt tags have helped some images rise to the very top of
Google image results for many of my sports photos.)

2. Browsers ignore the alt tag (assuming the page is rendered rather than
read).

So any info that might be meaningful to search engines and viewers needs to be
repeated twice.

If I'm in a hurry, I would much rather provide info that viewers can see (in a
news release 30 minutes after a game) than search engines will see (days,
weeks, or months later).

However, after years of fighting this battle, I am CERTAIN that this dichotomy
of purposes should not exist.

Any image titable with a title tag automatically implies a photograph, work of
art, or other image with a meaning to it.

The title of the image being present is a contextual suggestion that indicates
the image is more than a graphic used to layout the web page, and aural
browsers would automatically understand the context of the title even BETTER
than providing simply an alt tag.

The presence of a title tag in an image is not equivalent to an alt tag.

However, the presence of a title tag WITHOUT an alt tag should be recognized
as an explicit indicator that the title tag provides the information needed
for the alt tag as well. This is exactly as it should be for photographs and
other material, not only to indicate the content of the photograph for those
not actually viewing the photograph, but also to indicate the context of an
alt tag as being TITLE in addition to merely specifying alternate info about
an unspecified kind of image.


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Received on Wednesday, 14 September 2011 21:20:55 UTC