Re: Text for images used as links

Vicente Luque Centeno wrote:
> WCAG 2.0 says:
> 
>     "When an image is used as the content of a link, specify a text 
> alternative for the image. The text alternative should describe the 
> function of the link."
> 
> I completely disagree!!! The link's title (attribute) is for that 
> purpose. The image's alt is just for describing the image, not for 
> describing the function of the link.

There are hardly ever cases where an images alt attribute should 
describe the image. If you want to describe the image use longdesc and 
leave alt for a textual ALTernative as intended.

> This example shows the difference between img/@alt and a/@title.
> 
> <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer" title="Validate this page">
> <img class="logow3c" 
> src="http://validator.w3.org/images/vxhtml-basic10.gif"
> alt="XHTML Basic 1.0 icon" /></a>

I would have coded that as:

<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer" title="Validate this 
page"><img src="http://validator.w3.org/images/vxhtml-basic10.gif" 
alt="This page is valid XHTML Basic 1.0" /></a>.

Because "This page is valid XHTML Basic 1.0" is what the image conveys 
for those that can see it.

Regards,
Jon Hanna

…it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for equipment 
failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people." - jargon.txt

Received on Saturday, 28 May 2005 18:31:36 UTC