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Re: Annotated images

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Feb 9, 2007 7:40AM

On Fri, 9 Feb 2007, Chris Price wrote:

> In the pages of a new website I'm placing images, each of which has a
> brief description below it plus the photographer's name.
>
> If I leave the 'alt' attribute empty, the accompanying description will
> mean nothing if the image isn't displayed. However, if the image is
> described (in the 'alt') it just adds to the clutter for those who don't
> see the image.

You have described a very common problem - in a compact manner.
Unfortunately, there is no compact answer. As a rule, it is best to
include some indication of the presence of an image to those who do not
see the image so that the caption (description) does not cause too much
confusion. Something like alt="photo 42" might be suitable.

> The images provide a visual handle on the text but aren't necessary to
> understand the text.

For this problem, the role of the images does not really matter much,
except that for images with essential content, we should probably try to
make the image or the caption (or part thereof) a link to a textual
description of the content, if possible. (It's usually not possible or
feasible, but the issue should still be considered.)

For a decorative image, or for an illustration that should best be skipped
in no-images mode, you might consider making the caption part of the
image, using your favorite image processing program. Then you would use
alt="". In addition to extra work, there's the drawback that the text
would not then be resizable or refontable by the user.

For some related notes, see "Captions and accessibility",
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/captions.html#acc

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/