Re: use of alt attributes in decorative images

unless you are going to really work to make it fit, picture is a poor
choice of title as is logo, image, or any other content label.  I'd
put it in a sumary of th ediscription if at all as in:
this is a photograph of three men and a woman....
this would be in a d or description of image link though.  or perhaps
longdesc which will replace d.  Read it with images off on a browser
that supports the attribute.  I know that many do not adhere to this,
but a good audible flow goes a long way toward grounding your pages in
accessability.  We've debated this before and I have seen no
convincing argument to use any of the symbolic terms for the mark up
in conveying the meaning or intent of the item.  I have and do support
the use of the labels in a description.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@home.com>
Cc: "Frank Tobin" <ftobin@uiuc.edu>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: January 25, 2001 11:33 AM
Subject: Re: use of alt attributes in decorative images


At 06:21 AM 1/25/2001 , David Poehlman wrote:
>please don't use the word picture in a title for an image.  we
already
>know it is an image.
(Kynn wrote:)
>They should have ALT="" if they are -purely- visual decoration.
>You can use TITLE="Picture of a bird on a branch" or the
>LONGDESC attribute if you need to add further explanation to these
>images.

Actually, I would say that using that in title _is_ appropriate,
as it's a statement of what purpose and function the element
serves on the page.  "Picture of..." should never be in ALT
but I think it is very appropriate for TITLE of an image.

Frank, as you can see, there is often some disagreement about
how best to mark up certain parts of a web page.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                http://kynn.com/
Technical Developer Relations, Reef           http://www.reef.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://idyllmtn.com/
Contributor, Special Ed. Using XHTML     http://kynn.com/+seuxhtml
Unofficial Section 508 Checklist       http://kynn.com/+section508

Received on Thursday, 25 January 2001 12:08:32 UTC