WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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WebAIM-Forum Digest, Vol 216, Issue 24

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From: Christine Hogenkamp
Date: Mar 27, 2023 8:13AM

Hi Laurie-Anne,

1. Usually icons are meant to be decorative and do not require alt text, so
leaving the alt text as alt="" will indicate the icon is decorative and not
be announced by screen readers and other assistive tech. Ideally, any image
should not have alt text that isn't already present as live text nearby,
because then it will just be read out twice which is redundant.

2. You can also make this image decorative with alt text such as alt=""

3. This is a bit difficult to answer without seeing an example of the coded
format, but if your goal is to help users correctly identify the button, as
long as the button uses the tag <button> or is given the role "button" to
the element, it should get announced as a button as the user moves to that
item on the screen with a screen reader so the button diagram with arrow
having alt text shouldn't be necessary if the item has been given the
correct semantic format. You may want to also reconsider the action term
"click" since not all users will be using mice that click, though I think
most keyboard users or other assistive tech have an understanding of what
is asked for by "click" i.e. activate.

4. Usually in a table in HTML, headers are not indicated by using header
tags i.e. <h2> etc. Instead you give the table a header row <th> tag which
should assign the cells under in that column that header text. The text
itself doesn't require any tags within the header row cells. It may also be
that using a header tag within a table may create confusion for the
hierarchy of the text, if you use header tags elsewhere on the page (I
think a table header is not considered the same as a page header, for
organizing the text into the appropriate sections, like chapters in a book)
and I just did a quick search abou captions and tables, it seems they can
be used as headers for a table but do not require the use of an actual
header tag, see more info:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/tables/caption-summary/

Hope this helps!

*x*
*Christine Hogenkamp (She, Her)*
Front-end Developer
ContextCreative.com <http://contextcreative.com/>;


On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 2:00 PM < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Laurie-Anne Gignac < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: " <EMAIL REMOVED> " < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2023 20:15:32 +0000
> Subject: [WebAIM] Small clarifications for a newbie
> Hello, I am fairly new to web accessibility. I did the Introduction to Web
> Accessibility course (W3C/edX). I do not have a great background in
> development (HTML/CSS only not much of anything else). I'm using Typo3
> CMS. I need to work on the accessibility of my organization website, but
> sometimes I have questions about whether a problem really needs to be fixed.
>
>
> 1- We have "icon blocks". These blocks are composed of a link on two
> elements: an image and a title. <a><img></img><h3></h3></a> . The image
> sometimes has 2-3 words of text, but the same words are also used in the
> text. Is this okay? We should avoid text in images, but since there is text
> next to it in the link, is it okay? Also, does the image need an
> alternative text?
>
> 2- When I have an image of a book cover next to its title. Both
> elements are clickable. The image is only for aesthetic purposes, but since
> it is also a link, should we put an alternative text even if it is the same
> as the book title?
>
> 3- In a procedure, we explain that the user needs to click on a
> button. We have an image of the button in the text to facilitate
> recognition. I assume that we put an empty alternative text because it is
> redundant with the text (please validate). If we put an image of the entire
> screen with the button highlighted, potentially with an arrow, should this
> image have an alternative text or should it be empty?
>
> 4- If I have a table, is it ok to only use header (H2,H3...) or do I
> need to use caption?
>
> Thanks a lot! :)
>
> Laurie-Anne
> Bibliothécaire édimestre
> Direction des bibliothèques
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