ALT revisited

A little data I just learned:

In Netscape, setting "autoload images" off does not guarantee the
delivery of the ALT text to the screen.  It merely suppresses net-gets
of the image file.  If the image file is already in local cache,
the image is displayed and the ALT text is nowhere on the screen.
[Flushing the cache is more bother than a user should have to put
up with, and on a workgroup server the individual user does not
have a dedicated cache to flush once and forget.]

This leads Netscape+Screen_Reader users to ask for links in the
body of the text which are redundant to buttons where the link
content is an image.  Whereas Lynx users want link count
minimized and meaningful ALT text making the image-link usable as
read via the ALT text.  No wonder WebMasters have trouble
understanding what people are screaming at them.

This problem could be fixed by guideline, i.e. if Netscape
followed a "user control of styling" policy like what I included
in my ACSS action item response, the image link with
link-descriptive ALT text would serve all blind users alike.

Still, reflecting on our earlier conversation, I would say that
the use of ALT text in GUI browsers for sighted users favors
putting a description of the image in the ALT text, whereas the
user of ALT text in Lynx and pwWebSpeak favors putting a
description of the link target in the ALT text.

This means that the present definition and use of ALT fails to
isolate one semantic item consistently across browse modes.  Note
that both semantic senses are worth supporting.  We should strive
to refine the format and usage so that each gets a distinguished
representation within the HTML.  [One of these could indeed
possibly be TITLE.]

ALT represents an example of an opportunity to clean up the
accessibility of the Web by improving on the definition of the
Web media.  We may think that the problem is that the authors are
populating the standards wrong, but it is the standards that we
have the greatest leverage over.  We should not neglect a chance
to make the situation better by what we can change; relying on 
what others have to do for us should be used sparingly.

--
Al Gilman

Received on Thursday, 26 June 1997 19:15:06 UTC