- From: Al Gilman <asgilman@access.digex.net>
- Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 19:15:05 -0400 (EDT)
- To: w3c-wai-wg@w3.org (WAI Working Group)
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