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Re: Screenreader support for title....

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Jun 3, 2008 5:40AM

Paul Collins wrote:

> Just wondering what the latest is on this? The title never used to be
> read out by JAWS, IBM and the like, although that was supposed to be
> changing. Does anyone have the latest on which popular screenreaders
> read out both the title and alt attribute?

For some odd reason, the documents I found with simple searches look
rather old and sketchy. Moreover, the situation surely varies by
element. For example,
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/articles/WE05/forms.html
is from year 2005 and describes even JAWS 4.02 as supporting the title
element for several elements (though the <img> element, which you might
be primarily interested in, is "not tested").

But _some_ optional support (as a user-selectable option) has existed
for several years.

However, I think the issue is mostly pointless. Why would it matter,
when we _know_ that the great majority of users won't access the
information in title attributes anyway? A "normal" user might
accidentally hit some "titled" element with the mouse and then notice
the tiny text in a small popup, but mostly nobody sees what you put in a
title attribute.

If some information needs explanation, explain it in normal content.
Putting the information in an attribute may look modern and advanced,
but it's like publishing a book with annotations printed in invisible
ink that becomes visible in fluorescent light.

Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/