[html4all] testing AT users needs was: the alt attribute debate

[Steven Faulkner]

Hi all,
>hey lets do something novel, lets go and ask the users what they find
useful.

To this end, any help in designing a useful test to find out whether alt
text content that is provided from repurposed data provided by users
on photo sites such as titles or descriptions is more useful than repair
text, would be appreciated.

what about you "real" AT users on the list any ideas?

On 24/09/2007, Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Henri
>
> >It has been stated over and over. It's not like no one has said it.
> >I'll try to say it again:
>
> Many of us including your good self seem to be having trouble hearing
> what others are saying
>
> As have written in response to you on a number of occasions it is not
> simply JAWS that reads out the a filename (if the image is the sole content
> of a link) in response to no alt it is also the other major screen reader
> window eyes and for all i know quite a few others.
>
> and these AT are following UAAG:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10-TECHS/guidelines.html#tech-missing-alt
>
>
> >(And again, the premise is that bogus alt text is worse than no alt
> >text in the long run when JAWS is fixed not to read file names that
> >are not suited for reading.)
>
> This premise has not been sufficiently tested (actually to my
> knwoledge, no testing that has been published has been done by proponents of
> the alt change, so this premise is based on supposition), but as my initial
> testing results revealed much of what you call bogus alt text on images can
> actually provide some useful information about the image. What needs to be
> done is more research and hey lets do something novel, lets go and ask the
> users what they find useful.
>
>
> On 24/09/2007, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen at iki.fi> wrote:
> >
> > On Sep 23, 2007, at 01:58, John Foliot - WATS.ca wrote:
> >
> > > Creating a spec that condones images without alternative text might
> > > make
> > > life easier for indifferent content creators, it does *NOTHING* to
> > > improve
> > > accessibility - and I have seen nothing from anyone to counter that
> > > assertion.
> >
> > It has been stated over and over. It's not like no one has said it.
> > I'll try to say it again:
> >
> > By decoupling syntactic correctness from simplistic machine-
> > assessable accessibility testing, an incentive to pollute the non-
> > visual user experience with bogus alt text is removed.
> >
> > (And again, the premise is that bogus alt text is worse than no alt
> > text in the long run when JAWS is fixed not to read file names that
> > are not suited for reading.)
> >
> > --
> > Henri Sivonen
> > hsivonen at iki.fi
> > http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > List_HTML4all.org mailing list
> > http://www.html4all.org/wiki
> >
>
>
>
> --
> with regards
>
> Steve Faulkner
> Technical Director - TPG Europe
> Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium
>
> www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
> Web Accessibility Toolbar - http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html
>




-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
Web Accessibility Toolbar -
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html
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