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RE: alt="" vs alt=" "

for

From: Jon Gunderson
Date: Apr 9, 2002 9:15AM

Jukka,
I think this is a great example of the types of things there are possible
for accessibility if browser developers would fully implement W3C
specifications.

Thanks,
Jon



At 11:10 AM 4/9/2002 +0300, Jukka Korpela wrote:
>Jon Gunderson wrote:
>
> > If users were provided with more control over browser
> > rendering, a browser could render both the images and
> > the ALT text at the same time.
>
>Even some current browsers can be configured to behave that way. The CSS2
>specification mentions this is an example:
> The next rule inserts the text of the HTML "alt" attribute before the
> image. If the image is not displayed, the reader will still see
> the "alt" text.
> IMG:before { content: attr(alt) }
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/generate.html#content
>
>Testing with a slightly more complicated style sheet, intended to make the
>alt text appear within [Alt: ...] on a line of its own under the image,
> img:before { display:block; content: "A[Alt: " attr(alt) "]A"; }
>I noted that Netscape 6.1 (Win) supports this except for the line breaks,
>and Opera 6 seems to implement it just as specified. (By accident, actually:
>it seems to put the text on a separate line even if I omit the A's.)
>
>So some users might actually use their own user style sheets that make their
>browser display both the image and the alt text. And maybe title text too.
>
>But naturally the _meaning_ of an alt attribute is to specify the text to be
>used in place of the image when the image is not presented. It might also be
>made to appear when the image _is_ presented, which is worth knowing, but we
>should not design alt attributes specifically _for_ such situations.
>
>--
>Jukka Korpela
>TIEKE Tietoyhteiskunnan kehitt