Accessibility with attention deficit

On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 10:48:54AM -0400, Marti wrote:
....
>  A visually oriented user has the choice not to read the alt text
> information, don't you think a text oriented user should have the choice not
> read the image information? (yes I can turn off image loading but I am still
> stuck with [image] [inline] and other stuff that interrupts the flow and I
> have to get past to find the "content")
>  I find myself imagining a website where words and images are used and it
> comes across  like this -
> 1) The sentence: See the dog run.
> 2) Coded with an inline image of a dog, of course the image needs an alt
> text so
> 3) the sentence is read -  See the dog [dog] run.
> I guess we could say illustrations are decorative and don't need an alt text

Thanks, Marti, for putting the finger on the key accessibility issue
for people with attention-related perceptual deficits, such as
myself. Repetitious (or other irrelvant) content is just as effective
in disabling people like me as lack of text (or lack of illustrations)
would be in disabling people who require [text|illustrations|etc].

I've been disabled many times by web sites whose ALT text was a
_description_, with irrelevant details, instead of _replacement_ for an
image. This was an accessibility defect in the old content guidelines:
the old guideline said "description" instead of "replacement", and
webmasters who were trying to comply were led, instead, to disable
potential users like me.

I've joined this list to prevent analogous defects in the next version
of the content guidelines.  It is a wothwhile effort to provide
illustrations, audio, etc etc for those who need them. Just make sure
that those extra versions of content can be avoided by those of us who
would be disabled by the redundancy.

-- 
				Adam Reed
				areed2@calstatela.edu
				 
Context matters. Seldom does *anything* have only one cause.

Received on Saturday, 14 April 2001 01:41:07 UTC