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Re: Figures and Captions and Alt-text oh my...

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 8, 2018 5:54AM


This is what makes NvDA a great screen reader to test with, it does
much less guess work than, say, Jaws.



On 5/7/18, Steve Green < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I recently saw a statement that there are about 1.3 billion websites. I
> doubt if even 1% of those have been designed and tested to achieve a good
> level of accessibility. Screen readers therefore have to do the best they
> can with the other 99%. If some developers are relying on a screen reader to
> do a quick test, that doesn't seem a good enough reason to impair the user
> experience on the 99% of website where the developers didn't even test at
> all.
>
> Testing with assistive technologies is important, but developers should not
> be using screen readers to assess the level of standards compliance of their
> code - there are much more appropriate tools and techniques for that.
>
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen
> walker
> Sent: 07 May 2018 17:00
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Figures and Captions and Alt-text oh my...
>
> I agree the user experience would be worse, and the screen is intended for
> the person that needs it and not the developer, but it also gives a
> developer a false sense of accomplishment if their code sounds good. For
> example, jaws will try to find a label for an input field even if the
> developer didn't code one. That's bad for the developer but good for the
> end user. Of course, a11y testing should be done on a variety of platforms
> but there are unfortunately many cases of a quick test and people think
> they're good.
>
> Glen
>
> On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 3:40 AM, Steve Green
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>
>> Professional-grade screen readers have always used heuristics to clean
>> up bad design - it's one of the key things that sets them apart from
>> more basic screen readers. The user experience would be far worse if
>> they did nothing more than present the information that has been coded.
>>
>> Steve Green
>> Managing Director
>> Test Partners Ltd
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
>> glen walker
>> Sent: 07 May 2018 00:18
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Figures and Captions and Alt-text oh my...
>>
>> Screen readers should not have to clean up bad design.
>>
>> But that sounds kind of harsh. I would give them the benefit of the
>> doubt and say they were trying to do the right thing but overdid it.
>> In any event, a screen reader should not have to fix it. It should
>> stick with what it does best and present the information that has been
>> coded.
>>
>> Glen
>>
>> On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 1:39 PM, Jonathan Cohn < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I was just reading through the story about Alice's Restaurant that
>> > was in The Boston Globe this week. While an interesting story, it
>> > was getting very frustrating by the end with VoiceOver on the
>> > Macintosh reading essentially the same description for each picture four
>> > times.
>> >
>> > It would read once for the start of the figure once for the end of
>> > the figure, then the alt text and the text below the picture were also
>> > read.
>> > except for the alt attribute on the graphic itself all the text was
>> > exactly the same. So, our wonderful HTML5 standards have caused in
>> > at least one screen reader for graphical descriptions to be read four
>> > times.
>> >
>> > OK, I can figure out how to develop a figure that would not be as
>> > verbose though this In fact, if one puts the Macintosh in "Group"
>> > web navigation it won't be overly redundant.
>> >
>> > But is this issue essentially a Browser / screen reader issue or a
>> > design issue. I.E. if figure name = caption name = alt-text should
>> > we be requiring our Screen Reader vendors to clean this up, or
>> > should the underlying HTML generaed by Newspapers only include
>> > alternative text if they are not using figure /figcaption?
>> >
>> > Best wishes,
>> >
>> > Jonathan Cohn
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > >> > >> > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> > >> >
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >>
> > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > > >


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