WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: CSS content property and empty image alt values

for

From: steven
Date: Dec 10, 2010 8:27AM

Hi Chris,

Imagery to a visual person would generally not need explanation, if it is
purely presentational. Hence why I see the advantage of using CSS for images
rather than images within the DOM, therefore voiding the need for such
images (and blank alt attributes) to be part of the actual content (in cases
where images would not be content).

Diagrams would generally be regarded as content and should have alt text,
but I still think icons and banners etc generally are not content, so
wondered if screen readers would extend and honour the presentational nature
of CSS to make presentational images feasible (after all, XML and HTML5 have
been unable to do this alone, despite being created to divide content from
form and function). I would also remove menus and hyperlinks from content
too if I had my way and introduce a separate browser/app method of
connecting and navigating content, but this continues to be overlooked
whilst browser developers and standards developers work separately.

Regards,

Steven



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Chris Hoffman
Sent: 09 December 2010 14:53
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Cc: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] CSS content property and empty image alt values

Hi Steven,

According to a blog post from The Filament Group
(http://filamentgroup.com/lab/dingbat_webfonts_accessibility_issues/),
VoiceOver reads generated CSS content. The implication is that other
screenreaders generally do not.

I don't quite understand how that relates to presentational imagery, though.
Could you explain?

Chris



On Dec 9, 2010, at 6:11 AM, "steven" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Is anybody familiar with screen reader support (or intentional lack of
> support) for the CSS 'content' property?
>
> I ask because I know that images generated by HTML markup are known to be
> read by screen readers, but I am thinking if CSS content itself is not
read,
> then there can often be cases where presentational imagery serves no place
> in the HTML DOM and in such cases, would be better than serving images
with
> empty alt values.
>
> What are peoples thoughts and experience on this.
>
> Regards,
>
> Steven
>
>