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Bug 9081 - Confusing alt text in the fourth The Lady of Shalott example
Summary: Confusing alt text in the fourth The Lady of Shalott example
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 alt techniques (editor: Steven Faulkner) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: steve faulkner
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://dev.w3.org/html5/alt-technique...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: a11y, a11y_text-alt, WGDecision
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-02-19 01:23 UTC by Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
Modified: 2011-04-12 21:58 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-02-19 01:23:28 UTC
The fourth "The Lady of Shalott" example would read as follows to a non-graphical user:

   *** Medieval Nights ***

   Painting of a woman in a white flowing dress, sitting in a small boat.

   Join us for our medieval theme nights every Friday at 
   Boaters Bar,on the riverside, Kingston upon Thames.

This would be very confusing to say the least. The image is purely decorative; the alt="" text should be empty.
Comment 1 steve faulkner 2010-02-24 10:50:54 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> The fourth "The Lady of Shalott" example would read as follows to a
> non-graphical user:
>    *** Medieval Nights ***
>    Painting of a woman in a white flowing dress, sitting in a small boat.
>    Join us for our medieval theme nights every Friday at 
>    Boaters Bar,on the riverside, Kingston upon Thames.
> This would be very confusing to say the least. The image is purely decorative;
> the alt="" text should be empty.

the presence of an image is indicated to users of screen readers such as JAWS or NVDA

>    *** Medieval Nights ***
>    image: Painting of a woman in a white flowing dress, sitting in a small boat.
>    Join us for our medieval theme nights every Friday at 
>    Boaters Bar,on the riverside, Kingston upon Thames.
 
So it would not be confusing at all. A majority (70%) of screen reader users in a recent survey indictaed their preference to have an image described "If an image is used solely to enhance the mood or feel of a web page."

While I myself would reccommend that such images have an empty alt, I cannot say that if an author does provide such alt text that it would be non-conforming in HTML5. What I will do though is provide more examples of such content and in what cases it would recommened that alt=""
Comment 2 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-02-24 11:17:08 UTC
Steve, although this draft has not been proposed for publication yet, could you please include an Editor's Response in the proper format when resolving bugs?

Below is the recommended format. Please also include a link to the spec diff, if the spec is changed in response to a bug.

===============

EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: <http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html>.

Status: ["Accepted"/"Partially Accepted"/"Rejected"]
Change Description: ["no spec change", or explain actual spec change]
Rationale: [give rationale for change or lack of change here]

Comment 3 steve faulkner 2010-02-24 11:25:26 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please
reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML
Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest
title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue
yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
<http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html>.

Status: "Rejected"
Change Description: "no spec change" 
Rationale: 


The presence of an image is indicated to users of screen readers such as JAWS
or NVDA
  
   *** Medieval Nights ***
   image: Painting of a woman in a white flowing dress, sitting in a small boat.
   Join us for our medieval theme nights every Friday at 
   Boaters Bar,on the riverside, Kingston upon Thames.

So it would not be confusing at all. A majority (70%) of screen reader users in
a recent survey (http://www.webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/#images) indicated their preference to have an image described even "If an
image is used solely to enhance the mood or feel of a web page."

While I myself would recommend that in the majoriety of cases such images have an empty alt, I cannot say that if an author does provide such alt text that it would be non-conforming in HTML5. What I will do though is provide more examples of such content and in what cases it would be strongly recommeneded that alt="" be used over a non empty alt.
Comment 4 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-03-28 22:29:21 UTC
I didn't mention AT users. I said non-graphical users. For examples, users of Lynx or Firefox with images disabled. Accessibility is about _all_ users, not just those with ATs.
Comment 5 steve faulkner 2010-03-29 10:26:09 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> I didn't mention AT users. I said non-graphical users. For examples, users of
> Lynx or Firefox with images disabled. Accessibility is about _all_ users, not
> just those with ATs.

EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please
reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML
Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest
title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue
yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
<http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html>.

Status: "Rejected"
Change Description: "no spec change" 
Rationale: 

I do not consider that the resulting text would be confusing for users of lynx, for example, users can configure the lynx browser to turn every image into a link to the image, in this case your suggestion of alt="" would be far more confusing as it provides no indication of what the image is. 

Firefox is a graphical browser for which the user has turned images off, it's representation (or lack of) of text alternatives and images is based on what is currently recommended in HTML5, to my understanding this is not a recommendation based on or having consensus within the HTML wg, and may be subject to change. So at this time I do not intend to base best practice advice on firefox's behaviour.

please feel free to escalatae the issue to the html issue tracker.
Comment 6 Laura Carlson 2010-03-29 17:19:29 UTC
Adding "a11y" and "a11y_text-alt" keywords to this bug so it doesn't fall through the cracks.
Comment 7 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-03-29 17:57:55 UTC
Whoever handles creating the tracker issue for this, please make sure to make a new Tracker product for this document.
Comment 8 Michael[tm] Smith 2010-03-29 18:09:10 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> Whoever handles creating the tracker issue for this, please make sure to make a
> new Tracker product for this document.

I've added the product:

  http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/products/9

... however, I've not created the Tracker issue. I can do that if nobody else plans to, but in general I'd prefer not to become a bottleneck for creation of new Tracker issues. (We have 27 users in the Tracker user group, and all of us are equacally capable of creating Tracker issues for any bugs we are following that get flagged with TrackerIssue.)
Comment 9 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-03-30 03:40:03 UTC
Ian doesn't have tracker access himself. I'll create the issue for him at some point if no one else beats me to it.
Comment 10 Michael Cooper 2010-09-02 13:42:52 UTC
Bug triage sub-team notes the task force has an interest in this but does not need to prioritize its work on these. Steve and the reporters can follow the usual process on these.
Comment 11 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-09-15 09:46:37 UTC
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/122
Comment 12 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-09-15 09:48:32 UTC
I raised the same issue for this and bug 9077 since they seem closely related.
Comment 13 Sam Ruby 2011-03-29 16:01:40 UTC
Workgroup Decision: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Mar/0691.html
Comment 14 contributor 2011-04-12 21:58:57 UTC
Checked in as WHATWG revision r5993.
Check-in comment: apply wg decision
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=5992&to=5993