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Re: A larger discussion (was RE: Inline Images and ALTtext)

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jan 16, 2009 3:10PM

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 2:03 PM, John Foliot < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> If the biographical photos of you and the staff are "worthless", then why
> are you adding them to the page? There is a value-add proposition for
> including those photos, and with alt="" you are denying non-sighted users
> the ability to access or discard that value.

Once again, I am not arguing that the images are worthless,
non-essential, or don't convey something - content even. What I am
saying is that the content of my photograph is nothing more than
"Jared Smith" and that content is already fully conveyed in text
adjacent to the image. So why force this redundancy upon the user? If
I believed the content were truly something more than "Jared Smith" (I
can't imagine what - unless I were to *describe* the image - something
typically worse than useless), I would have added it in alt in the
first place.

If you remove the image altogether is any important *content* lost? I
would say no. You would probably disagree.

Yes, you may find screen reader (or other) users that would want to
hear or see "Jared Smith. Photo of Jared Smith.", but I think this is
the exception rather than the norm. In short, you have to weigh the
possible advantage of identifying the presence of the image with the
possible disadvantage of redundancy and over-burdening the user with
information. For me, the disadvantages outweigh the potential
advantage.

Is the user experience significantly different if you add brief alt
text, add alt="", or put it in a CSS background? No! It just doesn't
matter that much. But that doesn't mean it's not fun to debate such
things.

Jared

P.S. I've never referred to myself in the 3rd person so much in my life!