Re: Bobby inaccuracy?

alt+"" is correct here but the at that reads it as image.gif is in error
since it is empty, there should be nothing available to the screen
reader unless the screen reader preference is set to read the file name
of any element that has no alternative.  Jfw does not have such a
function and therefore has a bug i its implementation.  Further, using
this as a fall back for conveying the impression of the image is not
good since you may want to convey by the colored image that something is
new, on sale or discontinued to name a couple of examples.  In this
case, the obvious choice or alt is "new", "on sale" and or
"discontinued".  You can even use ! in them to get the point across
better.  Jfw does not even recognize alt="*" or *-" which is
unfortunate.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Eric Hellbusch" <hellbusch@web.de>
To: "Scarlett Julian (ED)" <Julian.Scarlett@sheffield.gov.uk>; "'David
Poehlman'" <poehlman1@home.com>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 9:30 AM
Subject: 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 10:11:42 UTC