Re: Another summary of alt="" issues and why the spec says what it says

(Removing Michael Smith and Dan Connolly from Cc)

On 4/18/08, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Steven Faulkner wrote:
>  > because being contiguous is a weak relationship and prone to error.
>  > ... an explcict association as supplied by the author is
>  > usually a much more robust.

>  > = utility of aria-describedby

> My point is that if a page says, say:

>    <h2>Photograph 2</h2>
>    <img src=321098412.jpeg>
>    <p>View North East from 23 High Street.</p>

>  ...then the user experience in a speech would be something like:

>    PHOTOGRAPH TWO. (Nondescript image.) View north east from
>    twenty three high street.

I fear it would often *not* be that good without an explicit
association.  The automated reader wouldn't know how the paragraph was
related to the photo, except that they're on the same part of the
page.  It would often say "321098412.jpeg" as part of its own
fallback.

An explicit statement (such as aria-describedby) would tell it that
the author did consider this a caption/description/something, and that
the reader doesn't need to go through its fallback routine.

-jJ

Received on Friday, 18 April 2008 08:06:49 UTC