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Posted by cwdjrxyz on 06/02/07 07:38
On Jun 1, 11:33 pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> In article
> <1180687766.468491.79...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
>
> Lsimmons5 <i...@lookit-up.com> wrote:
> > it seems to me that if you have a row of buttons linking to different
> > pages on a website, then every button and gif/jpeg should have its own
> > separate description
>
> No, this is not correct in all circumstances. If, whether for
> good reasons or bad, you have buttons that go to different pages
> as exampled in cwdjrxyz's page, it is entirely appropriate to
> have exactly the same alt text to help the user who sees no
> image. I remind you that in his example, the go buttons were just
> devices that took you to answers to questions that were already
> displayed in text on their left. Quite appropriate would be
> something like "Find out" or "Find out the answer to the
> question" or even, over verbosely, but with sure footedness,
> "Click to see the answer to the question on your left" - (don't
> even think of _really_ putting the latter!).
>
> There is no short "alt text for dummies" book, no really simple
> algorithm that will tell you what to say in alt text, it depends
> on the context. To construct alt text requires you to be someone
> who understands a little bit about other people, to be someone
> with a little imagination and understanding about blind people,
> about people with images turned off, about failure of images to
> be delivered from servers and so on and to make alternative
> provision for communication to cover such events in particular
> contexts. Not someone who buries his head in rule books and
> standards manuals alone.
>
> Simply imagine how you can help someone who does not see the
> image at all. You need to do something to help them in your
> communications. If the picture is not a filler or a part of the
> decoration especially, you need to convey something to replace
> it, either its content or function.
>
> As for what is or is not a decoration, this is not a question
> that has a definite answer in all circumstances. You can put in
> alt text for these if you wish, if only to explicitly convey that
> it is merely part of the page's pretty look and therefore safely
> to be ignored. But even here, the rule book nerds will get it
> woodenly wrong. Some people who do not see the decorative parts
> might nevertheless be interested from time to time (unlikely but
> this kind of thing does happen) in decoration. A pure mission to
> communicate all would demand you provide for even such unlikely
> interest. But no one would blame you if you did not.. I will make
> a comment about alt="" below
>
> > It would appear from the comments received that W3C approval can still
> > be obtained by simply choosing a non-descriptive ALT tag -- so what is
> > the value of W3C approval in this instance? Or have I totally
> > misunderstood the reasoning?
>
> About this business of alt="" for some situations. You have a
> choice. You can do this if there is a clause in your contract to
> supply validated source. Or if you simply cannot bear the sight
> of being rebuffed by a report from W3C. You can cheat and fudge
> to get over this line if you want. And you better like the sight
> of source strewn with dummy alts more than you like strictly
> unvalidated code. Yes, you guessed it, you can also forget all
> about putting in all that alt="" and what is the worst thing that
> can happen as a result of just this? Nothing really of any
> consequence. The real thing to be worried about is the true value
> of those pics that cause this little dilemma for the neurotic
> purist.
Just a little background. The site for which I gave the url belongs to
alt.food.wine. It took about a year to develop. This is an
international group. Different people from the US, France, Australia,
New Zealand, etc. agreed to write some of the sections. Then a
professor at a US university with an interest in wine, edited
everything. This was posted, there often was much discussion, and
changes were made. Once a text version of each section was finalized,
it was added to the FAQ posted, and it soon became apparent that this
was becoming a very long document indeed. Since I had some spare web
space, I offered to put up a domain for the FAQ. After looking at the
length of sections, it soon became apparent that putting everything on
the same page would result in very slow loading on slow dialup, and
some of the users of the group around the world only have slow dialup.
Thus, to take care of this problem, I put each section on a single
page. One section was so long that I ended up in having sections 3a
and 3b. I did no writing on this site, other than what was needed to
put the basic text on web pages. As the site developed, it was
discussed by the group, and some changes in colors, spacings, fonts,
etc. were made. If you read some of the sections in detail, you will
find that some of them have links within them. For these "secondary"
links, I used text links. For the primary section links, I used the
buttons that are very easy to see. I checked the site on many browsers
that I do not have, including a text browser. There were free sites in
Germany and the UK that allowed me to do this. I also checked the site
on non-official validators for the disabled. For instance, I found
some of my links were too close together for the blind and moved them
a bit. These "validators" are also fussy that alt be used for
everything. I also checked the pages on Opera set for a very small
screen size that approaches that of some small devices. The pages
still could be read well enough.
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