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Re: How do screen readers experience this image rotator?

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From: Angela French
Date: May 18, 2011 4:12PM

Patrick - If I keep the list, but use null value on the alt attribute, do you still perceive the list? Does it still waste your time and act as a nuisance?

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Patrick Burke
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2011 2:12 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] How do screen readers experience this image rotator?

Hi Angela,

With Jaws 12 (build 1158) & Firefox 4, I do indeed get the whole list. Some of the images seem to be repeated or split up, so there are 60 or so items. For some reason they are not reported as a list.

Scrolling image banners are very popular with designers, & usually very annoying for screen reader users. (Either because they refresh the page every time they scroll, or just introduce new content when you didn't expect it. So if I wanted to backtrack to reread something, I would find that what I was looking for had disappeared, without much clue as to why.) Fortunately you don't have those problems...

Overall I would say, consider what the purpose of the images is. In this case, do they show that the Board serves some parts of the state & not others? Or serves colleges at specific locations? In those situations, an explicit list or statement to that effect would be more useful.

If it's a series of images meant to evoke the varied landscapes of the state, then null alt text on the images might be best.

IN general, if anyone has an accessible solution for the scrolling banner construct, I and the devs on my campus could definitely use it!

Thanks much,
Patrick