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Re: (no subject)

for

From: Jon Brundage
Date: Feb 3, 2010 4:45PM

Hi Dallas,

I would suggest that since the link has text, use an empty ALT attribute for
the image, as adding ALT text would be redundant. The screen reader does not
need to read the link destination twice, just as a visual user does not need
to read the same information twice.

Consider the following code:

<A href="privacyPolicy.html">Privacy Policy <img src="privacyIcon.gif"
alt="Privacy Policy"></a>

A screen reader would pronounce "privacy policy" twice which is an
annoyance.

Since the link has text contained within the href tag, let the text do the
job of conveying the destination. The following makes for a better user
experience:

<A href="privacyPolicy.html">Privacy Policy <img src="privacyIcon.gif"
alt=""></a>

It also makes the JAWS version issue a moot point.

Jon

----- Original Message -----
From: "Despain, Dallas" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 5:54 PM
Subject: [WebAIM] (no subject)


> Hi everybody,
>
> I'm a developer trying to make sure that our web-based products are as
> accessible as possible. We have run into a discrepancy between jaws 10 and
> jaws 11.
>
> The "problem" is that in jaws 11, when you use the tab key to focus on a
> link that contains both an image and text (the image does have alt text)
> jaws only reads the text, not the alt text of the image. However if you
> use the arrow keys to read the link, both the alt text and link text are
> announced as expected.
>
> Interestingly, the order is important. That is, if the text comes first
> the text is announced but not the alt text. If the which comes first, just
> the image alt text is announced.
>
> If you'd like to see this in action, it can be observed in example 7 of
> the following webaim.org page:
> http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/#functional
>
> The link in question reads "download the employment application" and also
> contains an image with alt text= "sample image"
>
> So my question for you is: is this a known issue? I'm assuming that since
> I cannot reproduce this in jaws 10, this behavior must be new and
> unexpected but common. I'm not exactly sure how we could fix it, since our
> HTML is correct. Which is more common, the tab key or the arrow keys? Does
> this issue cause problems for jaws users?
>
> Thank you very much for any insight you could offer.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Dallas Despain
> RightNow Technologies
>
>