Different request Re: Replacing text

No. This would contravene checkpoint 3.4 of the Authoriong Tool 
Accessibility Guidelines - 
http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-no-default-alt -  and 
make it harder to improve the accessibility support of Amaya.

The text should be put there by an author, and be something that can 
replace the image in a text-only browser - for example "W3C" is used as 
an alternative for the W3C icon on W3C pages, and "Amaya" for the Amaya 
icon.   Other things which are clear in context might be "search", 
"hearing loss increases as people get older", "bookmark this page!" or 
"read all about new anti-spam products!!!!". (Yes, many people who rely 
on the text version of a page such as people who are blind *do* want 
access to advertising).

In Amaya  you can quickly test whether your alternative text is 
equivalent in meaning by reading the page in the "alternate view", one 
of the options under the view menu.

One particular trick is to use a single space for an equivalent where 
the image doesn't really mean anything. For example a decorative corner 
in a table (bad idea anyway, but if you must...) or a blank space to 
force some particular layout.

One thing that would be useful in Amaya is a checkbox on the image 
dialog to include a null alt - alt="" rather than a single space - in 
this case. There is still a risk taht people will misuse it, but at 
least it allows people to meeet widely recommended best practice if 
they have thought about the role of the image.

A related bugfix is to ensure that img elements that have no alt 
attribute at all are flagged as validation errors, and ideally there is 
a prompt for some value which includes a preview of the image. (A 
preview of the image in the insert image dialog would be really cool in 
general, and the ability to use the linking interface to select an 
image to insert would also be cool.  I will write this up more 
carefully as a plan to improve the accessibility of image insertion if 
that would be helpful).

cheers

Chaals

On Tuesday, Feb 18, 2003, at 01:26 Australia/Melbourne, julien wrote:

> In the Image directory dialog, could replacing text be set 
> automatically to
> Add Image file name?
>
> Julien
>
--
Charles McCathieNevile           charles@sidar.org
Fundación SIDAR                       http://www.sidar.org

Received on Monday, 17 February 2003 20:49:12 UTC