Re: Thoughts on professional portrait (headshot) images?

> My view is that the author’s view should prevail. If the author says the
image is decorative, then that’s what it is.

But in many cases (maybe most cases), we cannot know what an author's
intention was when they display some content. All outsiders (i.e. anyone
not the author) have to work on is the content itself, and the rest of the
surrounding web page as the context. They cannot know the author didn't
intend them to take in any information they contain. Accessibility testers,
likewise, can't second-guess the mind of the author, as to whether they
left the alt text blank because, like too many developers, they don't
understand (or care?) about screen reader users, or because they genuinely
considered it decorative.

In cases of doubt I believe the user, not the author, is the one who should
decide if an image provides useful information for them. Some images that
many of us (including the original developer) might dismiss as decorative,
other sighted users may nevertheless find they provide interesting context.
Sighted users can make that decision for themselves.

Blind people should have the same right to decide too - but when we put an
empty alt attribute on something, we take away that right to decide from
them because they will no longer be told an image even exists! So we need
to be quite sure that something really does not provide any information,
i.e. is truly just decorative, before we decide to take away that right. I
believe that when SC1.1.1 says "the equivalent purpose", it means the
purpose of the image as it actually appears on the page, not any nebulous
guess at what the author might have intended. So the Understanding document
describes the intention of this SC as "The intent of this Success Criterion
is to make information conveyed by non-text content accessible through the
use of a text alternative." - no reference to the author, only to the
actual content as it appears on the page.

In the case of headshots, a lot of people can obtain a lot of useful
information from these - how old they are, what gender, what ethic
background, and so on. Even if we don't find it easy to include all that in
the alt text, blind people can ask a friend what the person in the photo
looks like. But if we don't tell them an image is there, they can't.

I recently audited a university website. Many hero images on various pages
show some really beautifully designed buildings, but because they are hero
images they were all given empty alt texts. There was, in fact, not a
single screen reader announcement, anywhere, of what the buildings looked
like, although sighted people got to see them all! So I recommended that,
in a few of the images showing the best views, they should add good alt
text descriptions, even though not particularly relevant to the adjacent
text, just so blind people could be given some idea of what these buildings
looked like. The buildings may not have been relevant to adjacent text, but
they are certainly relevant to anyone interested in the website and the
university as a whole.