RE: advice on alt text for image maps

Léonie Watson wrote:
> 
> Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> > "There's a point in announcing the presence of an image, but I would
> >  still
> >  say that the prime objective of the alt attribute is to help people who
> >  cannot see the image at all."
> 
> Agreed. There is a point in announcing the image, and the prime
> objective of
> the alt text is to inform people who cannot see what the image
> contains.
> 
> >  "To them, telling them that there is an image is normally useless and
> >  disturbing."
> 
> Can you point to the research/feedback from blind people that suggests
> this?
> 
> Speaking personally, I think it's helpful to know when a link is
> graphical.
> That information is available to sighted people, and so it should also
> be
> available to blind people.

+1 to Léonie. 

You might consider the *prime* objective of alt text to be "helping people
who cannot see the image at all", but what about other objectives, such as
people who can see there is a non-text "blob" on their screen, but lack the
visual acuity to discern exactly what the blob is? Many low-vision users
will also rely on some form of screen reading to aid in their total page
comprehension, and informing them that the entire image represents "the map
of Katoomba" aids in their better comprehension of the page, so it is more
than just a "visual" thing, it is a "cognitive"  thing as well. 

"... useless and disturbing..." are pretty strong words, and smack (to me)
of a bit of paternalistic condescension - who are we to judge what is
useless or not for our users. It is an image. It is serving a special
purpose (as Leif notes), but it is still an image. Omitting that fact (or
deciding to omit that information) is an editorial decision that now creates
two classes of users: those that know an image is there, and those who have
been deliberately kept from knowing that information. I find that quite
troubling. 

> How would it help to know that there is a map when you cannot see that
> map?

Because it is there. You truly seem to be caught up in a very binary "Blind
versus Can_See_@_20/20" perspective that surprises me Jukka: alt text is not
just for blind people.

FWIW, I find the current example at
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/embedded-content-0.html#image-m
aps-0 wholly appropriate, and is exactly the kind of guidance *I* would
provide to an author who came to me asking how to make the image map
accessible.

(As an aside, I also agree with Leif's general comment that if the image is
captioned with "Map of Katoomba" that adding an alt text there would be
redundant, and so as a secondary Technique for Success I would note that as
well. It has been my practical observation and experience however that
getting image captions added can be something of an up-hill battle, so I
suspect that in practice adding an alt text to the image is going to be the
more popular and palpable option for the majority of authors.)

Cheers!

JF

Received on Sunday, 12 January 2014 23:00:30 UTC