- From: Tighe K. Lory <tkl02@health.state.ny.us>
- Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:52:35 -0400
- To: "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>, "WAI Interest Group list" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, "www-archive" <www-archive@w3.org>
Sent to wrong e-mail: ----- Forwarded by Tighe K. Lory/PWSA/PAG/DOH on 08/29/2007 11:52 AM ----- Tighe K. Lory/PWSA/PAG/DOH To 08/28/2007 02:31 w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org PM cc Subject RE: User Testing of Accessiblity Features(Document link: Tighe K. Lory) Hi Alastair, I think that in most cases, visiting a photo album Web site would not be of interest to someone is AT because of a visual impairment. That being said, I think that if an <img> is on a page it should and can have meaningful alt text. This would be true for a photo album site. If the image is irrelevant to the page either it should not be there, or should be a CSS background image. An example would be a stockphoto of a person (commonly used on Web pages). These photos convey absolutely no meaning, and are purely for aesthetic purposes. For example currently Sun Microsystems http://www.sun.com is running a promotion on their home page for JavaFX with a motorcycle racer photo. This photo is used only to convey the speed of developing applications JavaFX. Putting in alt text would just clutter up what the screen reader says, and I think make the site less useable. My mother-in-law is blind and when using JAWs tabs through links until she gets to a page with the content that she is looking for. She determines this by the title of the document. I can understand that some visually impaired users would want to know everything on the page because they don't want to miss something that a non-impaired user would see. But in cases like this they are not missing anything, and if I were developing a page like this I would use a CSS background. Thanks, Tighe "Alastair Campbell" <ac@nomensa.com> To Sent by: "Tim" <dogstar27@optushome.com.au> w3c-wai-ig-reques cc t@w3.org "WAI Interest Group list" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, "Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, 08/28/2007 01:44 <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie> PM Subject RE: User Testing of Accessiblity Features Tim wrote: > If it is just eye candy, it is not html content, call it as a > background image from the stylesheet rules. Please refer to the original comments on testing: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Aug/0577.html Not to mention when I said: > The issue at hand is not spacers, but content images that do not have > useful alts, and no realistic means of adding them. The reasons I believe it would be difficult to test in that fashion are: - Order effects need to be balanced, you're actually trying to do a comparison test with three different states. - Individual differences between participants are likely to be high, not only due to the effect Debi Orton noted, but due to different technologies and settings. - The responses you are looking for are experience based and quite subjective, the test-setup could massively bias the results. (In fact, just asking the setup and questions will indicate what sort of response you are looking for.) In this situation you would be better looking at a persona driven method, or simply making sure that there is a requirement for reasonable replacements. (I'd recommend reading the notes on Guideline 1 in http://wcagsamurai.org/errata/errata.html) Kind regards, -Alastair -- Nomensa - humanising technology Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience t. +44 (0)117 929 7333 | m. +44 (0)7970 879 653 Defacto, the first fully accessible content management system: http://www.defacto-cms.com/ Nomensa Email Disclaimer: http://www.nomensa.com/email-disclaimer.html Nomensa Ltd, 13 Queen Square, Bristol BS1 4NT GB 771727411, Company number: 4214477 IMPORTANT NOTICE: This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential or sensitive information which is, or may be, legally privileged or otherwise protected by law from further disclosure. It is intended only for the addressee. If you received this in error or from someone who was not authorized to send it to you, please do not distribute, copy or use it or any attachments. Please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete this from your system. Thank you for your cooperation.
Received on Wednesday, 29 August 2007 15:53:03 UTC