Re: aria label on a div alternative text for background images.

Hello, David.
Regarding your test page, the image is not a background, so I don't 
understand your first sentence. There is an alt for the image, so I 
think screen readers should read the alt.

As a side note, you have a closing </a> tag that has no opening tag 
(anyway it has no influence on the question).

In any case, if the image is a CSS background that conveys information, 
I would never suggest a technique that relies solely on aria-label, 
unless in the future there is other type of native "visual" support 
beyond the simple "screen reader" support (if there were any).

People with low vision (like me) rely on high-contrast mode or custom 
style sheets that hide backgrounds, since otherwise background images 
might interfere with text that is over them (for example, white text 
over a white or light-gray background image).

Therefore, any technique that suggests that aria-label is enough to 
convey the same information as the image would be harmful for people 
with low vision. Remember also that aria-label is not shown when 
disabling images.

Regards,
Ramón.

David wrote:

> I've been coming across lots of CSS images in background lately. 
> 
>    1. I was going to provide advise to use aria label  on the div like
>       this with the view to make a technique for us. <div role=image
>       class="backgroundimage" aria-label="this is the aria label">Some
>       test text</a></div>
>    2. But neither NVDA or JAWS most recent versions in most recent
>       versions of FF and IE read the aria label. SAFARI and VoiceOver
>       worked however... 
>    3. I looked it up in the ARIA test harness and the aria label should
>       report to the API... 
> 
> have other people had this experience.
> Test page:
> http://davidmacd.com/test/aria-label-on-div-surrounding-image-with-alt-text.html

Received on Monday, 26 May 2014 18:17:36 UTC