WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Regarding images lacking alts

for

From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Dec 4, 2012 5:35PM

True, I mainly use it as a reminder when I'm working on large pages. It's
easy to overlook small things sometimes, so this just reminds me that I've
overlooked something, and shows me where to look. When I'm done, I simply
remove it.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Birkir R. Gunnarsson" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2012 4:11 PM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Regarding images lacking alts


> Why not beef up the script slightly, to make it more accurate:
> If a graphic is part of a link:
> If there is text in the a tag.
> Then alt text is missing on the grphic (highest priority,else you end
> up most likely with an empty link).
> If there is alt text on image / graphic and also text in the link
> itself, may be display a message to that. If text is identical it will
> confuse users by having the link text read twice in most screen
> readers, better if image had empty alt tag in this situation.
>
> Not sure if trying to track labels for images in form fields or images
> that are buttons (or associated with a button), I can see that getting
> overly complex very fast.
> Cheers
> -B
> p.s. May be it's just me (likely it is), but very seldom do I find
> that alt text on an image that is not a link, button, or has some
> other "active" functionality on a website, does anything for me as a
> user.
>
>
> On 12/4/12, Bryan Garaventa < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> The second usage is what I find helpful.
>>
>> It's an easy script to run when building pages to verify that alts aren't
>> accidentally missing, which causes inconsistent announcement in screen
>> readers like JAWS.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jukka K. Korpela" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> To: < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2012 2:25 PM
>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Regarding images lacking alts
>>
>>
>>> 2012-12-05 0:00, Jared Smith wrote:
>>>
>>>> I do, however, like the idea of the alert script to identify images
>>>> that do not have an alt attribute defined,
>>>
>>> There are various existing tools for informing the user about alt
>>> attribute issues. I suppose they are mainly useful for developers (and
>>> e.g. to people who evaluate pages),
>>>
>>> In Firefox, the Web Developer Extension has an "Images" menu, where you
>>> can select e.g. "Display alt attributes" and (under "Outline images")
>>> options for outlining images without alt attributes and/or images with
>>> empty alt attributes. The outline is just a thin red line, though.
>>>
>>> But using the Stylish add-on in Firefox, you can easily specify a user
>>> style sheet for highlighting images without alt attributes, using e.g.
>>> the CSS code
>>> img:not([alt]) { outline: dashed red 3px; }
>>>
>>>> though I suppose this could
>>>> simply result in alt="" (or worse) being added instead of true,
>>>> equivalent alternative text.
>>>
>>> That's quite possible. On a quick look at various sites, with alt
>>> attribute display enabled, I noticed that wrong alt attributes are a
>>> more common problem than lack of alt attributes. Problems vary from
>>> pointless short stories written into the attributes to serious issues
>>> like alt="" on an image that is the sole content of a link.
>>>
>>> Yucca
>>>
>>> >>> >>> >>
>> >> >> >>
> > >