RE: Screen readers and images

The default behavior in JAWS (3.7) is to read "graphic, [alt text]" if the
alt tag is set, and completely ignore the image if the alt tag is not
present (or alt="").

There is a user setting for "Graphic Verbosity" that can be set to "All
Graphics" (the default setting is "Tagged Images"). Set to "All Graphics",
JAWS will read the URI of the image if it has no alt text. For example, JAWS
might read "graphic, images/mypicture.jpg".

IBM Home Page Reader 3 has the same default behavior as JAWS (except that it
doesn't say the word "graphic" ahead of the alt text). If the user checks
the setting: "Annonuce images with no alt text", HPR will read "image with
no alt text" followed by the uri (e.g. "images/mypicture.jpg") for images
without alt text.


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Jeff Isom
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 7:59 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Screen readers and images

Can anyone explain to me how screen readers handle images?  I was under the
impression that if an image doesn't have an alt tag, the screen reader would
read a file name or something similar.  Is this correct, or does the screen
reader simply skip the image as if it were not there.

Thanks,
Jeff Isom

Received on Friday, 9 February 2001 18:08:32 UTC