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Thread: alt="" -- causing problems? with who?
Number of posts in this thread: 3 (In chronological order)
From: Raena
Date: Thu, Mar 08 2007 12:50AM
Subject: alt="" -- causing problems? with who?
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Hello,
A coworker recently told me that she'd heard that using alt="" triggers a
bug in certain screenreaders. This apparently happened at an information
session she attended, run by Vision Australia. She says that alt=" " (with
a space) was recommended instead.
Has anyone heard of this occurring? I've heard nothing but good about this
technique and I'm sure a lot of us use it often.
Here is a BIG FAT DISCLAIMER that I'm not necessarily questioning the
quality of Vision Australia's information; it's equally likely that my
coworker misinterpreted or heard wrong.
Kind regards,
Raena
From: Jared Smith
Date: Thu, Mar 08 2007 9:40AM
Subject: Re: alt="" -- causing problems? with who?
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On 3/8/07, Raena < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hello,
>
> A coworker recently told me that she'd heard that using alt="" triggers a
> bug in certain screenreaders.
I have yet to see a *modern* case where alt="" causes any problems. I
know that some screenreader (I can't even remember which) many years
ago incorrectly insisted on alt=" ". Using alt=" " is not recommended.
I've seen an adverse situation with this usage where instead of
ignoring the image like they should, a screenreader will identify each
image then attempt to read the non-empty alt text. In other words, a
series of decorative images might be identified as "image image image
image".
Also, by my understanding, alt=" " seems to go a bit against the HTML
spec. WCAG 2.0 does say that alt=" " is valid, but that alt="" is
recommended.
Hopefully that clarifies things a bit.
Jared Smith
WebAIM.org
From: Raena
Date: Thu, Mar 08 2007 5:10PM
Subject: Re: alt="" -- causing problems? with who?
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Hi everyone,
On 3/8/07, I wrote:
>
> A coworker recently told me that she'd heard that using alt="" triggers a
> bug in certain screenreaders. This apparently happened at an information
> session she attended, run by Vision Australia. She says that alt=" " (with
> a space) was recommended instead.
Thanks for the information regarding the above, both on- and off-list; it
was enormously helpful! I for one will stick with alt="" for now. Haven't
chatted to Coworker yet, but I'll suggest she gets in touch with Vision
Australia again.
Asides from that IE bug, does anyone recall exactly which
screenreader/version did this? Or was it just IE?
Kindly,
Raena