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RE: Specifying empty alt text in A-Prompt

for

From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Oct 28, 2003 11:05AM


Jukka,

As I recall, inserting a space between the quotation marks causes issues
with JAWS (as I recall, instead of ignoring the useless image, the blank
space draws attention to it...). As well, should a user mouse over the
non-essential image in a browser such as IE 5 or 6 the small blank "tool
tip" appears... disconcerting if nothing else, and a cause of "problems" to
the non-initiated, visual task masters many of us need to report to... I
would strongly urge not doing this.

JF
--
John Foliot <EMAIL REMOVED>
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca 1.866.932.4878 (North America)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jukka K. Korpela [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 12:44 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: Specifying empty alt text in A-Prompt
>
>
> As many people probably know, A-Prompt is one of the best available tools
> for automatic testing of some accessibility issues as well as fixing some
> problems as they are detected. Unfortunately it seems that the software is
> not under any development or maintenance. (It's available for free from
> http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/ )
>
> Now, while writing some instructions for using it, I noticed that I cannot
> find a way to specify an empty alt text, alt="", when fixing a page with
> A-Prompt. It refuses to accept a change if I specify nothing in the text
> box for alt text. What I am currently suggesting is the use of a space and
> either leaving it at that (since alt=" " seldom causes problems when
> alt="" would have be the most adequate choice) or fixing alt=" " later
> using one's favorite authoring problem.
>
> But is there a simpler way? The documentation of A-Prompt clearly mentions
> that alt="" is often adequate, so its authors clearly did not
> _mean_ to prevent specifying an empty alt text.
>
> --
> Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
>
>
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>
>



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