RE: ALT revisited

I was reviewing the new Netscape Communicator 4.0 and found that is has 
trouble with alt text on many pages.  It seems that the ALT TEXT appears 
sometimes and not others depending on whether the WIDTH tag is used and how 
large it is.

Here is as much information as I have.   This is preliminary right now.  I 
just downloaded the new browser before I left town so I don't have full 
testing yet.

FIRST - All of the behavior reported is for the Win95 version of the 
program.  I have not checked any other versions.


ALT TEXT APPEARING OR NOT IN A DOCUMENT

1)  Alt text DOES appear if you either
     a) don't have any Height and Width set for an image or
     b)  the Height and Width are large enough to include the ENTIRE alt 
text.

2)  If you DO set the Height and Width and the Width you set is not big 
enough to hold the ENTIRE alt text,  then NONE of the alt text is 
displayed.

3) The alt text DOES NOT WRAP so that you must have enough room for the 
ENTIRE length of the alt text to appear in the WIDTH setting.   (You must 
also have the HEIGHT setting large enough for the height of the text... but 
not usually a problem except for graphic lines)

4) There are also circumstances where all the alt text disappears from the 
Edit View but if I close the view and reopen it the alt text returns so 
that doesn't seem to be a real problem..  just a bug.

Note:  In all these circumstances, the alt text still appears as a tooltip 
which pops up when you point to a graphic.

Example #2 is the most important issue though 2, 3, and 4 are all problems




MOVING OF THE ALT TEXT TO A LOWER LEVEL IN THE IMAGE PROPERTIES

The place that calls for ALT TEXT for a graphic used to be at the highest 
level of the image properties dialog box, right next to the path.    It has 
now been moved to a button at the bottom of the properties dialog box that 
is labeled "Alt Text / Low Res..."   It therefore takes more time to use 
and is less obvious that it should be filled out. (At first I couldn't find 
it because I was looking for it in the dialog itself and then I went 
looking for it under the tabs at the top.) It would be MUCH better if it 
was on the top level so that it was convenient and looked like an important 
part of the image specification rather than an optional specification.

 It would be EVEN BETTER if it prompted for the alt text... though it 
should not require it I don't think (there may be places where it is not 
appropriate and situations where someone else will do the alt text).  There 
are already prompts for other things like image files that aren't found at 
the specified location and they are easy to dismiss.

For convenience I have attached a page I tossed together quickly to explore 
the problem briefly.  I have pasted this memo into the bottom to make it 
easier to read and look at.    Different conditions are shown for 
information



While on the topic of ALT TEXT   here are two other notes regarding alt 
text.

1) UNDERLINE ALT TEXT IF IT IS A LINK
If the alt text is on an image that is a link the alt text SHOULD BE 
UNDERLINED
If the alt text is on an image that is NOT a link - is should appear as it 
does now. (not underlined)


2)  WHEN YOU TURN OFF IMAGES THEY SHOULD NOT APPEAR EVEN IF THEY ARE IN THE 
CACHE.
The Alt text should appear instead.  This makes it much easier for 
webmasters and others to check their web pages to see if and how well the 
ALT TEXT appears.


I have passed these notes on to Netscape.    I am posting this to the group 
for several reasons.

1)  They are loopholes or potholes that we should document in any browser 
guidelines so they don't get repeated.

2)  They show how dependent web page designers are on the idiosyncrasies of 
web browsers.  (You can design what you think is an accessible page with 
alt text and then have it not appear in some browsers).

3)  It highlights the difficulty we will have in writing guidelines that 
will make web pages accessible today (versus having pages designed to a 
spec that browsers will meet in the near (hopefully very near) future.) 
 For example the guideline looks like it would read

" Use ALT TEXT with all graphics and do NOT use either the height or width 
command unless you are certain that the the width of the text (in whatever 
font size the user has as his default) in the ALT TEXT message is less than 
the width you have set  for you image and the text height is less than the 
height set for the image."

"Do not make ALT TEXT (in the user set font size) longer than the width 
from the left edge of the graphic  to the right edge of the page (on a 640 
x480 screen)   (or the right edge of the graphic if it has a WIDTH command)

 


CONCLUSION

We need to define some common browser behaviors if we are to have a simple 
and comprehensible set of guidelines for web designers to use.    Both of 
the above recommendations would reduce to

"Use alt text with all graphics"

if

1) the graphic would expand to fit the ALT TEXT
2) the ALT TEXT would word wrap if needed
3) there was a setting (a user setting) that would prevent a graphic from 
appearing alongside a paragraph (so that the alt text for the image did not 
appear in the midst of the paragraph text when read by a screen reader) 
 (particularly a problem if the ALT TEXT is word wrapped. )
This last one needs some thinking but you get the drift of the idea.   This 
last one may also not be necessary if we have intelligent talking browsers 
or screen readers that can detect side by side text and not inter-read 
them.
The first one though is necessary though for the ALT TEXT to appear at all 
for a screen reader (though a talking or text browser would have the alt 
text avail in any case.)
Just some thoughts.  Got to run.

Gregg

-- ------------------------------
Gregg C. Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Dept of Industrial Engineering
Director - Trace R & D Center, Waisman Center
University of Wisconsin- Madison
gv@trace.wisc.edu,    WWW&FTP at  Trace.Wisc.Edu
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