RE: Absent or null alt on img within figure element

> I am in favor of flagging a violation if alt is absent or is null on an img within a figure.
Thoughts?

I agree, we should definitely look into figure and come up with some guidelines around failures and sufficient techniques.

For example, in most situations a caption is not the same as alternative -- although it could be.  Some figures are not images, e.g. code examples, and others do contain images or represent images.  A figure could also contain multiple images.

Role of presentation could also be used on inner images and role="img" could be applied to figure to further clarify that a figure is indeed an image figure.

Figures also don't necessarily need a figcaption -- but it's not clear if they always need a figcaption or accessible name?  While best practice is to reference the figcaption as the accessible name -- is that required -- it seems like figcaption is already programmatically associated.

Jonathan

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-----Original Message-----
From: Sailesh Panchang [mailto:spanchang02@yahoo.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 4:34 PM
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Absent or null alt on img within figure element

Greetings,
Is it  okay to omit the alt on an img element inside a figure element and rely on the figcaption to provide the text alternative? 

As a screen reader user, I am not in favor of doing away with the alt or even setting a null alt on the img because I do not realize that there is an actual image present; nor can I use image-navigation to quickly move to the image. Nor can I copy / save the image locally if I wished to.
The examples within HTML5 specs do use an a non-empty alt for images within a figure which is perfectly fine by me.
I am in favor of flagging a violation if alt is absent or is null on an img within a figure.
Thoughts?
Thanks very much,
Sailesh Panchang

Received on Tuesday, 21 July 2015 21:08:44 UTC