Re: null alt=

This is a contentious issue, Bill, like all the others. The prupose of
alt="" is for the author to say, don't render this image, or link, because
I have put it in other places. So the author who has a row of images to
click on, for those people who like icons, can have text links adjacent to
those pictures. That thoughtful author puts alt="" so the person listening
to the page doesn't hear the stuff twice. This is good. It is the right
kind of tool to give the sensitive author.

Home Page Reader ignores image links with alt="". The next version will
have a setting (not the default) to override that and announce the image
links with alt="". We added that setting because authors (like in the test
page) were not using alt="" as recommended.

Jim Thatcher
IBM Special Needs Systems
www.ibm.com/sns
thatch@us.ibm.com
(512)838-0432



love26@gorge.net (William Loughborough) on 04/29/99 03:46:59 PM

Please respond to love26@gorge.net

To:   au <w3c-wai-au@w3.org>
cc:    (bcc: James Thatcher/Austin/IBM)
Subject:  null alt=





"page still gets a bobby approved when in actuality the links, which are
images with alt="", are invisible."

If our "AAA conformant" authoring tool put out anything that met the
above description, where did we go wrong?  The example cited is
http://www.dors.state.md.us/test.html which I haven't tested.

Bruce Bailey, who brought this up recommends: "My recommendation is that
ALT="" should be illegal inside <A HREF..."
--
Love.
            ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
http://dicomp.pair.com

Received on Thursday, 29 April 1999 17:26:51 UTC