Re: alt-text authoring guidelines

On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Daniel Dardailler wrote:

> I would say: there is the company logo on the left corner (do you want
> me to describe it?), then it says "Welcome to XYZ", etc.
> 
> So that later, on, if I refer to "the page with the company logo on
> it", then it would make sense.

Except that this XYZ's company policy requires the company logo to be
on all of their pages, so that detail doesn't help.  Are you going to
bother the listener with this detail on every single one of their
pages?  They also demand the pages to be a specific shade of blue, so
that is also an important piece of information (or at least, the XYZ
company design office considers it to be an important piece of
information).  And the design office insists that the font has to be
New Baskerville, so that's another important detail that you need to
convey to the listener, it seems. Where shall it end? 

> It's just information, 

As I said, this depends on the specific situation, I don't believe one
can make an absolute rule that takes no account of the context.

Apart from that, I gather that you put the borderline between content
and decoration in a different place than I do - I don't claim to
be the final arbiter of that, I was only expressing a personal view,
and I'm content to leave the discussion at that.

> and I don't see why I would not give it away.

My answer to that would be that concentrating on extraneous visual
detail can be distracting the listener from the real content of the
page.  But again, it's all a question of context, and the author's
intentions for the various components of their page.

Received on Friday, 10 April 1998 09:42:07 UTC