RE: JAWS and name attribute for IMG

This brings up a discussion I recently had at a conference in New Orleans.
We had a visually impaired presenter tell us that she prefers that images
used solely for layout and convey no information be identified with ALT="".
I maintain the Commonwealth of Virginia portal, and we use ALT="#" (with the
first image identifying what the # stands for).  The reason we do this is
because there didn't seem to be any way for a blind user to tell the
difference between an image with an empty ALT tag and an image someone
FORGOT to ALT tag.  Has there been any discussion (and I apologize if there
has been, as I'm a newbie here) on how to best address this?  Does the NAME
attribute work on all browsers?

Chris O'Kennon
Commonwealth of Virginia Webmaster/
VIPNet Portal Architect
www.myvirginia.org 

******************************************
"This had better work." 
	-Grand Moff Tarkin
 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Ley [mailto:jim@jibbering.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 8:19 AM
> To: john_slatin; WCAG (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: JAWS and name attribute for IMG
> 
> 
> "john_slatin" <john_slatin@forum.utexas.edu>
> > I just discovered something surprising (at least to me):
> >
> > For IMG elements, JAWS 4.01 reports the *name* attribute when
> >  ALT="" and there is no TITLE attribute.
> 
> I think this would make a lot of sense in the case where 
> there was no ALT
> attribute at all. You don't say which browser you're using 
> with JAWS but
> it's possible that the browser doesn't expose the difference between
> ALT="" and no ALT in the DOM, in which case it would still 
> need to do the
> repair activity.
> 
> Jim.
>

Received on Thursday, 2 May 2002 09:16:33 UTC