WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: LONGDESC in HTML5?

for

From: Steven Faulkner
Date: Sep 25, 2010 7:09AM

Hi vlad,

your wrote:
"> The purpose of alt is not to "describe" images but to replace them.
Alternate text can be quite different than a description of an image."

I cannot disagree more. the content of the alt attribute can be and is many
things:
The abscence of content indicates the image is decorative.
If the image is the sole content of a link it is a description/label of the
link target.
if the image is a photograph, diagram, illustration, cartoon, chart the alt
may be a short description of the content.
+others

I respect yours and others views, but cannot accept that it is official or
mandated anywhere that content of the alt attribute is always and can only
be a "textual substitute", nor should it be, just as it should not be
mandated that the presence of the image object in a HTML page must not be
conveyed to users.

regards
stevef



On 25 September 2010 10:42, E.J. Zufelt < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

>
> On 2010-09-25, at 5:25 AM, Vlad Alexander (XStandard) wrote:
>
> > I wrote: "Unfortunately, we are still talking about @alt and @longdesc as
> "image descriptions" with the only difference being the number of characters
> typed."
> >
> > Josh wrote: "What else would you like them to do?"
> >
> > Let's take a look at the text from this article:
> > http://webaim.org/techniques/images/longdesc
> >
> > Article text: "In some instances, an image is too complex to describe in
> a few words."
> >
> > The purpose of alt is not to "describe" images but to replace them.
> Alternate text can be quite different than a description of an image.
> >
> > Article text: "Although there does not appear to be any limit to the
> length of text in an alt attribute, alt text is meant to be relatively
> short, so it would be an abuse of this attribute to write more than a few
> words, or, at most, a few short sentences."
> >
> > Why? @alt is part of document content just like paragraphs. If you don't
> impose arbitrary limits on paragraphs, why impose them on alt. The author
> should decide on the length of alt text.
> >
> > Article text: "The answer, then, is to provide a brief alt text
> description of the image and then provide a longer description elsewhere."
> >
> > This statement implies that alt and longdesc are the same except one is
> longer than the other.
> >
> > We need to start calling content in the @alt attribute "textual
> substitute" for an image, and content appearing in the @longdesc as a
> "description" if we ever want alt to be authored correctly and longdesc to
> be used.
> >
> I agree completely that we need to call content in the alt attribute
> ""textual substitute" in order for there to be a clear differentiation, The
> difference is * not * short and long description, but image replacement text
> and image description text.
>
> Image description text is relative to the image, whereas image replacement
> text is relative to a specific usage of an image within a specific piece of
> content.
>
> I think that we also need to specify that alt ought to be able to point to
> structured content, in case the image replacement needs to be structured
> text (lists, etc.).
>
>
> Everett
>