Re: Two new sites

At 11:17 PM 24/10/98 -0500, Charles F. Munat wrote:
>>>Liam Quinn wrote:
>>>Is there any point in the non-visual user hearing "Image: Spacer" and
>>>"Image: Vertical rule"?  I would think that using ALT="" would be much
>less
>>>distracting.
>>
>>Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>>I agree.  You might want to put a TITLE on the IMG with this
>>information instead.
>
>On my copy of pwWebspeak, it reads the title tags, too.

This doesn't seem like the right way to handle TITLE attributes aurally.
The TITLE attribute gives "advisory information" [1], so I don't think it
should be read without somehow indicating that it's only giving advisory
information.

"Advisory information" on an IMG seems like a good place for a short
description of the image ("Blue vertical line", "Girl on the beach"), but
these descriptions should only be offered if the user wants them.  If I
were using a voice browser, I would only want descriptions when listening
to a page that was clearly graphically rich, such as a photo album.  In
other words, the reading of TITLEs should be a user-configurable feature
that defaults to off.  When reading the TITLE, the browser should indicate
the context by saying "Image: Girl on the beach" or using a distinctive
voice for "Girl on the beach" so that the user knows that he or she is
hearing a short description of an image.  The short description should link
to the LONGDESC if one is offered.

(I haven't used pwWebSpeak, so I don't know how close my description is to
what is now implemented.)

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#adef-title

>And it seems pointless to me to
>use an Alt="" attribute just for the sake of Bobby Approval.

You're also getting the approval of HTML validators (if you're using HTML
4.0) and Lynx users.

-- 
Liam Quinn

Received on Sunday, 25 October 1998 12:12:32 UTC