RE: What now ALT?

Rimantas Liubertas wrote:
>
> So you have alt="" and everyone is happy, but you don't use alt 
> attribute and you end up in court? "Common sense is not that common" 
> indeed.  There ARE cases when alt attribute would do more harm and 
> hurt accessibilty more than lack of it, and spec would allow you to 
> omit it in that case. @alt should only be used when it makes sense. 
> Of course, if you catch yourself with IMG which does not need alt 
> attribute make sure this img does belong in code, not in CSS.
>
> Regards,
> Rimantas

Rimantas,

I have heard this claim before, that an alt attribute would do more harm and
hurt accessibility, but I have yet to hear exactly when and how.

How exactly does it cause harm? (Please be specific) I've heard opinions
from people who do not *need* to rely on alternative text, but as they are
simply opinions, I have also heard counter-opinions.  How does it "hurt"
accessibility, and more importantly, where is the data that backs up these
claims?  When does not using @alt make sense? (again, specifically)  I can't
think of *any* instance when providing no information to one unique group
(i.e. discriminating) makes sense, and frankly, neither can the law if we
are to understand what Human Rights Legislation suggests.

Be very, very clear: alt="" is hardly useful(1) and does little to improve
accessibility on the surface - the bottom line is that the very same image
is essentially inaccessible to the non-sighted user.  However, if a future
specification suggests that under "certain circumstances" images might not
need an alternative text because it is too difficult, or because, as Anne
van Kesteren claimed, [*he* did not find] "...it necessary to provide
replacement text for all those images. This would take too much time for
little benefit."(2)...  Imagine if a major corporation (like Target) could
use this as a legal defense? (And don't think that they would not)

And so the "social engineering" aspect of mandating images to have
alternative text removes this potential legal defense.  *This* is why the
current suggestion is bad. 

The Working Group are correct, there are times when adding alternative text
might not be simple or easy (the suggestion of an image upload directly from
a cell phone is legitimate), but rather than endorsing *no* alternative
text, we should instead be looking at a different kind of 'signaling device'
which could serve as a temporary placeholder under these circumstances. (and
I stress the word temporary)  Photo-sharing sites might default to this
placeholder value, but would (Should? Must?) allow content owners/creators
the ability to go back and modify the default placeholder with something
more appropriate.  These sites could also do the socially responsible thing
and actually encourage their clients to do the right thing by offering
FAQ/training, ensuring that their web-based user-interfaces actually allow
for the insertion of alternative text, and perhaps even offering incentives:
Google made a game out of having people supply meta values to images that
they were indexing.  Sometimes creative solutions come from places other
than the technical realm.

But to throw up our hands and say, "well, it's simply too hard, and has
little payoff"... Nope can't accept that, sorry, that's just plain wrong.

JF

(1)I say hardly, because at least today, screen reading technology reads out
nothing when it encounters alt="", whereas an image with no alt attribute
generally results in the screen reading software "heuristically" reading
aloud the file name

(2) http://annevankesteren.nl/2007/09/alt

Received on Wednesday, 3 October 2007 23:53:38 UTC