Re: Alternative text

At 09:24 AM 11/10/2006, you wrote:

>On Fri, 2006-11-10 at 14:06 +0000, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
>
> > I think you've answered your own question to a certain extent: because
> > there ISN'T anything set in stone (and there couldn't be), there are
> > different schools of thought. Even asking different screen reader /
> > text browser / etc users will usually get you different answers, more
> > akin to personal preference. Personally, I tend to fall into the
> > second camp: if it's something like a photo of a member of staff on a
> > profile page, I'd treat it as visual fluff and put a null alt on it.
>
>Finding someone somewhere who can clarify this is hard though, as my
>co-workers want to do things like adding alt text to every single image,
>which is clearly incorrect.
>
> > Of course, it's a judgement call that needs to be carefully
> > made...when is an image fluff and when does it start to become
> > meaningful content?
>
>I think when you can read the content without the image, it would be
>fluff, but if you need the image, for example a chart of sales figures,
>or the image offers a snapshot, or an 'at a glance' representation of
>the content, then yes, it would be worthy of being considered content.
>
>matt

We have debated this issue in New York for quite some time now.  We 
have had opinions from AT users on both sides.  Some feel cheated if 
every image is not described, while others prefer not to hear 
descriptions of "eye candy."

What would be really nice is if there were some sort of flag the 
developer could set (something like 'informational="no/yes"' that the 
AT user could use to have images treated as they'd prefer.


Debi Orton/oradnio@wsg.net
www.consideration.org
www.flashquake.org

Received on Friday, 10 November 2006 19:23:41 UTC