Re: Request for review of alt and alt value for authoring or publishing tools

Thanks for providing this additional info henry.

I should have qualified my statement by saying that I was talking
about JAWS and Window Eyes, - the two most popular screen readers.


> P.S. <img alt="_decorative"> and <img alt="_notsupplied"> would both have
> bad backwards-compatibility characteristics as far as VoiceOver goes.

they would also with most other AT I assume, these would be much worse
than having alt="" or no alt for most legacy AT.

Note: as i stated [1] earlier today
"I am not convinced of the merit of a reserved value for the alt
attribute, nor am I convinced of the desirability of having alt
required. Neither am I convinced of the worthlessness of these
proposals."

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Apr/0468.html

On 16/04/2008, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
> On Apr 16, 2008, at 11:01, Steven Faulkner wrote:
> > If a screen reader encounters an <img alt="" noalt>
> > instead of ignoring the image if it is <img> or <img alt=""> as it
> > does now (in most circumstances) it could simply announce the presence
> > of the graphic as it does now:
> > <img alt="useful text"> announces "graphic useful text"
> >
> > <img alt=""> or <img> announces nothing
> >
>
>
> This is not true for VoiceOver with Safari.
>
> <img alt=""> announces nothing and makes the image not focusable with VO
> unless linked in which case it is focusable and read as "Link".
>
> <img> announces "Image" unless linked in which case the filename after the
> last slash in URI is read and "Image" is *not* announced. (Thus VoiceOver
> shares JAWS' design flaw that it doesn't check if the file name looks like a
> readable English word.)
>
> It appears that VoiceOver's behavior fits the current spec draft fine except
> for the case that the image is linked and has no alt.
>
> Testing on Mac OS X 10.5.2 with Safari 3.1. Demo document:
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/test/moz/alt.html
>
> P.S. <img alt="_decorative"> and <img alt="_notsupplied"> would both have
> bad backwards-compatibility characteristics as far as VoiceOver goes.
>
> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsivonen@iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

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Received on Wednesday, 16 April 2008 11:37:50 UTC