AW: Bobby inaccuracy?

> I was under the impression that for images that convey no meaning
whatsoever
> it was best to include an empty alt text thus alt=""

That is what I have been doing, too. We did some testing with several screen
readers incl. JFW3.7 on that and decided to  leave out the alt text out for
coloring and other layout images. The reason for doing this is very simple:
if there is no alt text, our test screen readers read the file name by
default instead. We went on to name the GIFs something like "blueline.gif",
"red-ball.gif" and so on. The point is that by using many images for layout
the audio output becomes endless, if each (meaningless) image has an alt
text. On the other hand, screen reader users are able to opt out of having
each image being read and accounted for and can configure the screen reader
to ignore images, let’s say, under 10px width or height (assuming there is
no alt text). In this case, larger images on the site such as logo and some
eye catchers received attention by the screen readers and the others
_usually_ not; and if so, they were read "meaningful", e.g. "blueline gif".

Jan

Received on Tuesday, 15 January 2002 09:25:41 UTC