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Re: Alt Tags length and Content

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Aug 5, 2003 11:35PM

On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 <EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:

> The W3C provides an example of alt text for icons on their WCAG page -- the
> W3c WAI-AA WCAG 1.0 icon affixed to the bottom of the page is accompanied by
> the alt text:
>
> "Level Triple-A conformance icon, W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility
> Guidelines 1.0"

Well, the WAI pages have different accessibility problems, and this is one
of them. In fact, that page http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/ does not actually
comply with the guidelines even at single A level. It does not indicate
all changes in language (such as names of people in languages other than
English). Whether Checkpoint 4.1 is a sensible requirement at present, as
Priority 1 requirement, is a separate issue; the point is claiming
conformance to a WCAG 1.0 is simply wrong if that checkpoint is not
satisfied. (By the way, who can honestly say to have checked that his
document complies with Checkpoint 14.1, "Use the clearest and simplest
language appropriate for a site's content.", which is Priority 1 too.)

My point is that the W3C WAI icons themselves are worse than
useless. The long ALT text is a symptom of the fact that they realized
that W3C WAI-AA WCAG 1.0 (the most obvious candidate for an ALT text) is
horrendously cryptic when read aloud - but it's no less cryptic to the eye
when presented as an image, even though the parts appear in different font
styles and colors. This, in turn, is a symptom of the problem that the
icon tries to say something rather complicated, which is unnecessary to
say, and almost always false at that.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/


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