- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charlesn@sunrise.srl.rmit.edu.au>
- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 12:02:55 +1100 (EST)
- To: "'IG - WAI Interest Group List'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
- cc: "'GL - WAI Guidelines WG'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Following up on Greg's four issues which need to bedealt with by a solution: Where images are used as icons, it is often not very clear what the image IS, although it is supposed to be clear what the idea represented is. For a simple example http://www.cfd.rmit.edu.au/ had an icon which was 5 horizontal lines. It meant Index, but I had to try it to work that out. ALT tagging it "INDEX" would have been helpful, whereas tagging it "5 lines" would not. A similar situation arises throughout the RMIT website. The RMIT logo is a red blob next to RMIT, sometimes with the word University underneath. This is used as a link to the RMIT Front Page thoughout the website. To describe it (it is a picture of a word) the best seems to be RMIT or RMIT logo, but to describe the link which the picture is supposed to describe, RMIT front page (or similar) is usually used. Where decorative graphics are used, an ALT tag can give an idea of what is there. examples would be "pretty blue and pink line", "Picture of me in a red hat and boots", etc. Where a blue dot or similar is used as a bullet for list items, it seems tedious to read "blue dot Item one, blue dot Item two, blue dot Item forty seven, etc". In that situation I am inclined to use an asterisk, since I think the dot only serves a visual function. (I could be way off beam there - tell me people) Spacer graphics are simple. Don't. There may be a case to be made for them when hell freezes over. I doubt it. How to convince web authors of that is another question. TITLE and LONGDESC seem to provide a means for splitting the two functions of ALT which are identified above. Unfortunately, they are not backward compatible, so ALT text should be used as well, to provide whichever of the functions seems most important in a given case. Just my 2 cents worth. And in Australia, that is not legal tender - it has to be rounded down to zero. Charles McCathieNevile Sunrise Research Laboratory RMIT University
Received on Monday, 16 February 1998 20:20:43 UTC