Re: turn off alt & title

Of course, some content and functionality could be lost when the user turns off display of @alt or @title; for example, there are sites use @title for making details about items available as pop-ups. If the user can turn on indicators showing which elements have @title, and then use the element's context menu to get those extra details, that would preserve the functionality without the distraction.  The indicator could be required by SC 1.1.2 "Indicate Unrendered Alternative Content", but unfortunately that does not require distinguishing between title and other forms of alternative content. Having a means of viewing @title using the keyboard is implied by SC 2.1.1 "Provide Full Keyboard Functionality", but this could be an easily overlooked detail. As we've discussed before, this would require the user be able to move keyboard focus to any element that has alternative content, not just interactive controls.

As an aside about tooltips, I wish we could encourage developers that they be at least a little bit intelligent about when they show them. For example, tooltips triggered by the position of the mouse pointer should really only be shown in response to the pointer moving, not to content scrolling underneath a stationary pointer, and both keyboard-triggered and pointer-triggered tooltips should be optional. Use case: Tim only uses the keyboard, so the mouse pointer remains at a fixed point on the screen. He presses the Tab key to move the keyboard focus to a text entry field. This causes the page to scroll, and an element with @title just happens to end up under the pointer, causing a pop-up to appear, obscuring some of the content he's looking at. In order to hide the tooltip, Tim has to move the focus out of the text field so that he can use an arrow key to scroll the page, then move the focus back to the text field. This would not be necessary if the browser only triggered 
the tooltip by the mouse moving over an element (not the element moving under the pointer). It would be nice if WCAG recommended the same for popups driven by content scripts.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: turn off alt & title
From: Jim Allan <jimallan@tsbvi.edu>
To: WAI-ua <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>
Date: 6/2/2014 10:12 AM
> was on the cognitive call today. An item came up about designers not using @title or @alt on sites for folks with distraction issues because tooltips can be distracting. then they started talking about dual sites or authoring guidelines. Seems a better place for turning off these would be in the UA, might be able to do it with css.
> perhaps for UAAG next
>
> -- 
> Jim Allan, Accessibility Coordinator & Webmaster
> Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
> 1100 W. 45th St., Austin, Texas 78756
> voice 512.206.9315    fax: 512.206.9264 http://www.tsbvi.edu/
> "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." McLuhan, 1964