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Posted by GreyWyvern on 12/22/44 11:24
And lo, Charles Sweeney didst speak in alt.www.webmaster,alt.html:
> GreyWyvern wrote
>
>> Charles Sweeney <me@charlessweeney.com> wrote:
>>
>>> GreyWyvern wrote
>>>
>>>> The obvious alt text
>>>> for a logo would be the name of the company/organization it
>>>> represents.
>>>
>>> The obvious alt text would be "company name logo".
>>
>> No. You're hung up on the mechanics of how browsers put together
>> pages, with all the various pieces of technology, when instead you
>> should be considering them part of a document structure which works
>> regardless if certain parts are disabled.
>
> Not at all. I simply don't see how "Joe Bloggs logo" is a disservice to
> a visitor.
It isn't. Yet the "logo" tacked onto the end is quite meaningless,
revealing more about what's *missing* from the document than the
information the text conveys.
>> If someone is browsing with images off, it's pretty certain they are
>> doing so for a reason. "company name logo" tells them they are
>> *missing* something, while using the name of the company tells them
>> *what* they are missing.
>
> Not sure if you have misunderstood me. By "company name logo" I mean
> (as in the example above) "Joe Bloggs logo", where "Joe Bloggs" is the
> name of the company.
I understood you perfectly, and my reasoning still stands.
>> Think about it: what is the purpose of a
>> company logo? Most often it is to identify the company. How does
>> "company name logo" identify the company?
>
> This was discussed in another reply. A logo is a visual identifier.
> You *cannot* represent an image with words. This is not up for debate.
So why are you trying? Alt text does not try to "represent" the image.
It is meant *only* to convey the same basic information as the image which
could not be displayed. In the case of a logo, this information is brand
identification, not logo identification.
>> Is all your alt text just a teaser to get people with images turned
>> off to load them to see what they're missing? Don't you think that's
>> a little presumptuous? What if your visitors are blind?
>
> Not at all. It tells them there is an image there,
To what end? "An image was supposed to be here, but you can't see it."
This is certainly need-to-know information, mm-hmm.
> and gives them a
> brief description of it.
You want alt-text to be a description, when it is actually a fallback
replacement. In many cases, especially with photographs, a "brief"
description is OK alt-text. What I do not agree with is letting the user
*know* that the text has replaced an image in cases where the image is
*not* a photograph. This is information that just isn't necessary to
understand a document whether images are enabled or disabled.
> If visitors are blind, they still get the same
> words that a person trying to do the impossible (representing an image
> with words) would use, but preceded with "Picture of..."
Unless your document *cannot* be understood without an element which has
been disabled by the user, explicitly notifying them that your document is
now broken makes very little sense; and makes the webmaster look like an
amateur.
Grey
--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollory that nothing is ridiculous.
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