WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: "alt" text sizing?!

for

From: Paul Bohman
Date: Aug 15, 2002 1:42PM

Developers really can't change the behavior of the browser in this
respect. Users, however, may be able to change the settings on their own
computers. For example, in Windows, you can right click on the desk top,
choose properties, appearance, then change the size of tool tips in the
drop-down menu. This will effect all applications on the computer, not
just the browser.

You could come up with some fancy CSS + JavaScript method of imitating
tool tip popups with mouseover scripts and CSS layers, which would give
you a lot of control, but this is unnecessary and probably not a very
good idea for most things, since these would be imitation alt "tags",
not the real alt text that goes with images. I don't personally know of
any other method.

In truth, browsers really shouldn't have a popup tool tip for alt text
at all. They could have a tool tip for the "title" attribute, but alt
text is meant to be hidden. Netscape 6 and 7, and Opera handle this
correctly. Internet Explorer continues to show the tool tip popup.

Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu