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Re: [EXTERNAL]Figures and Captions and Alt-text oh my...

for

From: glen walker
Date: May 8, 2018 6:09PM

I really like the artist's hidden descriptions. It's a shame they don't
want sighted users to see them. I understand not trying to influence the
observer's thoughts, but I looked at the pictures differently after reading
the descriptions (which is probably the artist's point), but I liked how I
saw them after reading the description. I would have missed out on some
things otherwise. You could have the description in a "disclosure" object,
https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/#disclosure, so that all users can
benefit from them.

If you still want to hide them completely from sighted users (assuming the
sighted user doesn't bring up the code inspector in the browser), I was
going to suggest using aria-describedby on the <img> tag but JAWS does not
honor it. aria-describedby is a global attribute that can be used on any
element so I'm not sure why it isn't being honored. NVDA reads it ok.
aria-describedby should be part of the "accessible description" computation
so shouldn't be affected by whether you have an alt attribute or not (since
alt is part of the "accessible name" computation).

The following worked great in NVDA. I didn't try VoiceOver.

<img src="paintings/3kids.jpg" alt="Three children" aria-describedby="desc">
<span id="desc" style="display: none">
Three children stand by the road side, not ready to cross. Discomfort and
malaise informs their expressions. Behind them, beyond the cliff side, lies
the vast ocean. In the distance a whale breaks the waves. Does this portend
the thing they are waiting for?
</span>

To me, it helped associate the description with the image itself instead of
having the description as just paragraph text after the picture.