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Re: client using title instead of alt on image.

for

From: Kevin Miller
Date: Apr 5, 2010 5:12PM

Title does provide the sometimes useful 'hover' feature - but some browsers
treat that attribute differently - there's a great article about
it<http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200412/the_alt_and_title_attributes/>;at
456 Brea Street's website.

We tell our clients they must always have the alt attribute, the the title
attribute can also be used to supplement the content - often for links or
images within links to provide tips to sighted users. Some browsers only
hover tips with the mouse and not on a keyboard scoping - so use with
caution.

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Despain, Dallas < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Jukka, Andrew, and Dean
>
> Thank you very much for your well thought out responses. I think I'll just
> take the "not reliable for all assistive technology" approach.
>
> I am continually amazed at the incredible wealth of information and depth
> of knowledge of users of this list. Thank you!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Dallas
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:
> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Simius Puer
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:28 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] client using title instead of alt on image.
>
> As Jukka quite rightly points out, use of "title" isn't invalid (most HTML
> tags can accept a title attribute) at all, but *not* using an "alt"
> attribute is!
>
> If you need a solid argument for using the "alt" attribute there it is -
> valid code and all the niceness that goes with it:
>
> - Just mention improved SEO and most clients are sold but there are other
> reasons too
> - For accessibility you can't guarantee that all past, present and future
> AT software will accept the "title" attribute in lieu of the "alt"
> one...using tags and attributes for their intended purpose should be a
> standard practice for any decent HTML coder
> - More likely to be fully cross-browser compatible
>
> ...if they are still not sold on why valid code is important suggest they
> read: http://validator.w3.org/docs/why.html
>
> Incidentally if the client uses a null alt="" the page will run through a
> validator without any problems so you can't simply rely on that, although
> it
> is a good start.
>
> *Background*
>
> Early versions of IE incorrectly displayed the alt-text on mouseover.
> Other
> browsers were not following a trend - they simply applied the correct
> behavior of the "alt" attribute in the HTML spec (or it could be the User
> Agent Accessibility Guidelines UAAG - I forget which).
>
> As IE8 is now much more standards compliant than older versions it no
> longer
> behaves the same way in "standards" mode.
>
>
>