[thelist] Re: <spacer>

[aardvark]

> From: Andrew McKiernan <andrew at kephra.com.au>
> >
> > but that's a whole different story... those are the same folks who
> > leave alt atributes out of *all* their images, so spacer.gif or not,
> > the entire page is usually pretty bad...  i don't equate poor coding
> > practices with qualification for use of an element...
>
> I'd have to say that putting ALT tags on a spacer image is definitely
> NOT the best thing to do as far as Accessibility goes. In the example
> of someone with a visual impairment using a text-reader such as JAWS
> they get something like the following:
>
> "LINK: Next Page, spacer dot gif, LINK: Index, spacer dot gif, LINK:
> About Us, spacer dot gif, LINK: Home, spacer dot gif"

erm, if i use alt="", i don't get that... nothing gets pronounced that
way at all, at least not here, and not on the machines at the blind
association i've done work for...

> Now how annoying would that be to listen to on every web page you
> visited? Spacer gifs are invisible to the sighted for a reason,
> putting ALT tags on one actually makes it VISIBLE to a blind person.

only if you insert content, or something other than alt=""...

> Its a simple thing to use ALT tags on your images and I wish more
> designers/developers would do it, but it is a simpler thing to just
> leave them off the spacer gifs and possibly gain an extra "A" on your
> w3.org Accessibility Rating :)

don't the WAI guidelines *require* them for each image?

yep, 1.1 at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-
WEBCONTENT/#conformance

"Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g., via "alt",
"longdesc", or in element content). This includes: images,
graphical representations of text (including symbols), image map
regions, animations (e.g., animated GIFs), applets and
programmatic objects, ascii art, frames, scripts, images used as
list bullets, **spacers**, graphical buttons, sounds (played with or
without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of
video, and video."  [emphasis is mine]

so, you don't get an extra A on the WAI conformance, you actually
lose *all* As by leaving the alts out of spacer images...


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