Re: ALT text

At 07:28 AM 3/13/99 -0500, Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
>Jonathan, Silas,
>
>I've been reviewing mail here and I think there might have been some
>messages which passed between the two of you without getting on the email
>list.  In particular, why is it useful to turn off ALT text?  I realize it
>has to do with the tags popping up.  But is that a problem because it's
>visually distracting or because it interferes with programs that read the
>screen with synthetic speech?  Or some other cause?
>

Jonathan can correct/clarify, but this is the impression I got.

We have the idiom "adding insult to injury."

In Sexual Harrassment law we have the concept of "creating a hostile work
environment."

The image I got combined these notions.

The _injury_ is, yes, un-helpful motion/change in the document.

The _insult_ is that the user interface persists in flashing _words_ at the
visitor who does not process words.  Imagine that for the blind browser,
[IMAGE] appeared not only when one encounters an inline, undocumented image
in the page, but also at random as the text is being read.

What I heard was that tooltips popping up words as the mouse roams the page
was perceived as creating a hostile environment by non-readers.

Killing the ALT text in the document is a workaround for killing the
tooltip popup in the browser.

This is how I understood the report.

Al

Received on Saturday, 13 March 1999 12:14:05 UTC