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Re: Content in background images

for

From: Dean Hamack
Date: May 24, 2011 11:15AM

I can only see one reason why users would disable images, and that's if they
are on a mobile device with a slow connection. And I think that's a really
rare edge case. As long as the link contains all of the text that's in the
images so that screenreader users can get the same information, I think it
is perfectly fine.


On 5/24/11 10:06 AM, "Angela Colter" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi Dean,
>
> Indeed, the CSS for the link I mentioned specifies both text-indent:
> -10000px and overflow: hidden
>
> And that's the reason for my question.
>
> One of the things that accessibility review checklists always tell you to do
> is turn off images to see if the same information is conveyed. (See
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/preliminary.html and
> http://webaim.org/resources/opera/#images ) In this case, the page is marked
> up so that screenreader users have access to the link text, but people who
> merely turn off images in a GUI browser will not.
>
> It makes sense that marking up the page this way is useful for allowing
> flexibility in how the page is presented in a variety of devices, but is
> that happening at the cost of users who are simply turning images off?
>
> And is the poor experience of these users--and I'll grant you that I have no
> idea if such users even exist--a valid argument against using this
> content-in-background-images method?
>
> Angela