WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Alternate text for images having caption adjacent

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: May 27, 2014 1:33PM


On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 1:09 PM, Jonathan Avila wrote:

> Alt text may often be different from a caption.

Indeed. And in this case, the image would need an alt attribute value
in addition to the caption.

> For example, a caption might be "Washington crossing the Delaware", but the
> alt text for the picture would in most situations need to describe more
> than that to be a replacement of the image for someone who could not see
> it.

Yep, but if the full alternative *is* in context, adding
alt="Painting. The description is in the text below." is silly and
doesn't resemble alternative text at all, but it is what the WCAG
definition and techniques suggest is necessary for conformance.

Jared