Re: heuristic tests not in guidelines

At 05:07 PM 10/27/98 -0500, Bruce Bailey wrote:
>There are probably a lot of suggestions folks could make for improving
>Bobby.  My recommendation is that ALT="" should be illegal inside <A
>HREF...


LRK:: I like that heuristic, but I think it needs to be a warning, not
absolutely illegal.  What if you have both an decorative icon and text that
are part of the same link.  For example

<A href="index.html">
   <IMG SRC="cutsie_doodad.gif" ALT=" ">
   Home.
</A>

Here, you want the sighted person to be able to click on
cutsie_doodad.gif,so it's inside the link, but you don't want to clutter
the screenreader with any ALT text about it at all.  (Tho I would argue for
a longdesc for people who do want a description of cutsie_doodad.gif).

Of course, if ALT=" " is the only thing inside a link then I'd agree that
it would be illegal.

Len

-------
Leonard R. Kasday
Institute on Disabilities/UAP at Temple University, Philadelphia PA
email:     kasday@acm.org
telephone: (215} 204 2247

Received on Wednesday, 28 October 1998 09:16:30 UTC