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Re[2]: Dayton Art Alternative Descriptions

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From: Iain Harrison
Date: Nov 8, 2004 11:39AM

Monday, November 8, 2004, 3:34:27 PM, sailesh.panchang wrote about
http://www.plainwords.co.uk:

> 1. What do you think about prefix like picture of and photo of
> in alt text? I think they are unnecessary and add to verbosity.

There is a significant difference between the meaning of the words
"picture" and "photo" - though maybe they're not used properly on
that page. Sometimes, the alt starts "cartoon..."

> For JAWS users, images are announced as graphics anyway.

Sorry, I don't see the relevance of that. A graphic could be a
picture, a photo, a chart, a logo or one of many other graphical
objects. Are non-sighted users not to be told which it is?

> If there are just one or two images on a page it is passable
> but when one needs to listen to the prefix repeatedly on a page /
> site, it becomes a problem.

So fix Jaws so that it works properly. Don't break the web page to
accommodate a mis-coded screen reader.

> 2. On this page there are image links prefixed in this fashion.
> The alt should really be saying where the link leads to.

No, IMV the title should say where the link leads to. The alt is an
alternative description of the image for people who can't see it,
for whatever reason. The title (whether read or displayed as a
tooltip) says where it goes to.

Again, just because the overpriced Jaws gets it wrong does not mean
that web designers should too.

> 3. I have always been suggesting to FS that title and alt
> should be spoken by default if they are different but this has not
> been implemented. In fact title and label or whatever should be
> spoken if different. This option is available for form controls
> though not by default. Else users need to keep checking if
> title is defined.

I don't understand this point. If it was on by default, and they
were the same, or there was no title, it would work anyway. Again,
Jaws has got the default wrong. Not the web site that is incorrect.

> And users who do not know HTML will not know
> what to do.

They shouldn't have to. Jaws should get it right by default.

> 4. Again on this page, title has been set on a div element
> which is not announced by JAWS. JAWS speaks title on just a few
> elements. WinEyes also speaks it on form element, list element
> etc.

Although this appears to be another Jaws defect, I'm not sure I
understand your point at all. The page title is in the head of the
page. The fact that an individual div has a title is hardly a
drawback.

> 5. Although div is regarded as a structural element, screen readers do not announce it.

Right, so we should leave the information off?

I think that we are in a catch-22 situation here. You appear to be
suggesting that screen readers don't work properly, and ignore some
elements, so we should leave those elements out? If we go down that
route, they'll never get it right: there'd be no point, because
there would be nothing for them to read.

I'd rather hoped for some feedback about the "skip to content" and
"site map" links which use accesskeys and are almost invisible in
sighted browsers that support CSS. I'm not sure I've got them right.


--

Iain