RE: alt text & punctuation - best practice?

My 2 cents... for consistency sake, there should always be a full-stop.
Readers cannot distinguish the difference between a single keyword and a
sentence: if we have several keywords, the reader interprets them as words
that make up a sentence.

Ivy Clark
Application Analyst, ARO IT (Systems Integration)
Aviva Asia Pte Ltd
4 Shenton Way #01-01 SGX Centre 2
Singapore 068807
Phone : (65) 68277951        Fax : (65) 68277910        Mobile :
Internet : ivy_clark@aviva-asia.com






<Ianl@dyslexic.com>@w3.org on 21/06/2004 17:52:39

Sent by:    w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org

To:    <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
cc:
Subject:    RE: alt text & punctuation - best practice?



>> 3. For alt text on an image which functions as a section heading:
>
>The same as if the heading were pure text.  In English, this means that
>there will be no full stop.

Headings:

I respectfully disagree.

Until such times as all screen readers are intelligent enough to pause
after a heading, it is kind - and surely best practice -- to punctuate
headings, to stop them running confusingly into the following text.

A colon is best as it expresses the anticipation of a heading, although
some people use a full stop/period. Perhaps on the basis that many
people don't know how to use a colon.

But it **is** one more thing to get people to remember.

Regards
Ian Litterick
www.dyslexic.com
www.iansyst.co.uk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org
> [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of David Woolley
> Sent: 21 June 2004 07:30
> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: alt text & punctuation - best practice?
>
>
>
> >
> > 1. For short alt text on an image which may or may not be a link:
>
> Depends on the context.  A semicolon may well be the correct
> punctuation
> between icons, or, to be really correct, they should be supplied as
> list items and then styled to to inline and bullet free for
> the iconic,
> visual users.
>
> > 2. For longer alt text which should read like a sentence:
>
> If it is a sentence, it should be punctuated like one.  Unfortunately,
> tag lines, like the example, are often noun phrases and are
> often treated
> as sub-titles, when used as text, so again, appropriate block
> level markup
> with styling to suppress the normal layout, might be better.
>
> > 3. For alt text on an image which functions as a section heading:
>
> The same as if the heading were pure text.  In English, this
> means that
> there will be no full stop.
>
>
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Received on Monday, 21 June 2004 06:00:23 UTC