Me again.

I'm rather concerned over alt tags now! I have to admit, that I have been (up until my frequent visits here) largely unaware of the different types of readers (JAWS, Lynx etc. ) that are being used by people.

Our SEO company is suggesting that when a picture of one of the hotels is used that the alt text reads "Whatever hotel, area of hotel, county of hotel" i.e. "PvM Hotel, Porth, Cornwall" (didn't put the full title in case people think I'm plugging it!) Now isn't that an awful lot of text for a 'reader' to read out to the visually impaired? Shouldn't the alt text just describe what the picture is? i.e. Image of PvM Hotel. I queried this with the SEO peeps, and they got a little snotty with me, saying that this was a misconception by many.

Have I got this all wrong again? Am I doomed to be permanently dazed and confused?

I really want the websites to be user friendly, easily accessed by those with disabilities and standards compliant!

Thanks in advance
Popje

Oh for crying out loud! I had my sig file wrapped in code tags! No-one is ever going to take me seriously at this rate! It's changed now, but I'm so sorry about that!!

This post has been edited by Popje: Apr 7 2008, 10:46 AM

I think the SEO-company is trying to be a spam company
Use tags for what they're for. ALT-tags are for textbrowsers, so it shows a short description of the image...

Well doesn't "PvM Hotel, Porth, Cornwall" count as a short description of the image then? Anything much longer might be a problem, but I would have thought just the name and location of the hotel if that's what the picture is would be ok, no? I don't see how that is spamming.

<rant>ALT is not a TAG it's an ATTRIBUTE!</rant>

I would probably put something like "Picture of ....."

I take it they want to put those words in every alt-tag on the site, even if it's a picture of the river Thames..



geek-talk from a girl...

My understanding is that putting "picture of..." as part of the alt attribute is just annoying when listening to it because they know they have come across a picture, they just want to know what it is of.

I don't think so, he only said when it was a picture of a hotel, not all pictures.

Your SEO company shouldn't get snotty, it seems like a valid question to me.

The alt attribute can be used for SEO but it shouldn't be used at the expensive of a visually impaired reader.

How about..

A picture of PvM Hotel at dusk in Porth, Cornwall

A picture of a PvM Hotel room.

A picture of the panoranic views of Porth, Cornwall as seen from a PvM Hotel room window.

125 is about the maximum number of characters for an alt tag. Any more and you are just going to confuse visitors.

Quite right, except, as Karinne points out ..........



James

Actually, Vanessa, audio Screen Readers -- at least the ones I use (TextAloud, HAL, SimplyTalker) -- do not announce Alt content at all ..... it only displays in textual Browsers such as Lynx, or the textual display window that is available as a separate facility with some audio screen readers.

I do think that including the type of image in the Alt description is welcome by most users who like to know whether it is describing a photograph, scan, painting, diagram, icon, etc.

James

This post has been edited by jamesicus: Apr 7 2008, 01:56 PM

I think that is good, Vanessa -- I would personally use "[photo of PvM Hotel, Porth, Cornwall]" to be a little more specific as to what the image is.

James

Well I was basing my information on Joe Clark's book "Building Accessible Websites", where he says:

Erm, I'm a fully-fledged fully-paid up member of the female gender have been now for *cough* *cough* years!! the name's Dutch for Poppy (or so I've been led to believe!! I'm going to brain my mate if she's been winding me up! God I hope it's not rude!)

Back on topic:
The thing is, they want the alt 'attributes' (my mistake earlier, sorry) on the main image for each page to be identical to the corresponding <h1> tags for each page. Not the same attributes for every image.

Oh, I'm sorry! I did wonder actually when I said 'he', I wasn't sure, so I decided I had to pick one and I thought if I was wrong, at least 'he' would be less insulting than 'it'!

Oops, sorry. You're quite right.

The SEO comp. keeps calling them that, and I sort of followed suit and now look a total prat!

Oh no, please don't apologise! hehehe I have to agree, 'it' would've been a little insulting, but very funny!

I certainly wouldn't argue too strenuously with Joe Clark! My position results from serving as (volunteer) Senior Technical Advisor to the Access World Design and Development Team (severely handicapped persons) where the consensus was that such Alt text information was desirable. We didn't want to employ "image" or "picture" as being redundant or self evident (as pointed out by Joe Clark), but the feeling was that the description of what kind of image was being used was "nice to know" information.

I use this methodology as a personal preference, but if I were start to receiving feedback that it is annoying, I would quickly change.

James

Hey guys, fully-fledged fully-paid up members of the female gender and "other",

This is something I've been pondering for a while myself. Popje, it sounds like the best solution would be what the SEO guys suggested going by what Vanessa quoted. As I haven't really gotten into accessibility extensively so I would trust the guys who have. It is really annoying when looking at a site with a text browser and it shows "Image of Something", but in contrast (and in my opinion) I find that it's more descriptive. Like I said, I'm gonna trust the people who deal with it in real day-to-day circumstances. One of the problems I run into is, or that bothers me, is that some pictures are not really necessary to the page when it's viewed in a text reader - like icons next to text links or images used to illustrate the topic when there is already a header doing so, so you essentially end up with duplicate titles. CSS o the rescue in most cases, but it can be a real pain!

Rich