[thelist] Re: <spacer>

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Fri May 31 13:25:00 CDT 2002


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On Friday, May 31, 2002, at 04:57  pm, aardvark wrote:

>> "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=""...

If you don't put alt attributes in there, and you're using a lot of
spacer images, you get a machine-gun like delivery of
IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE
IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE
IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE

>
>> 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?

Yes, to meet even Priority 1:
"[Priority 1]
A Web content developer *must* satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one
or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the
document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some
groups to be able to use Web documents. "
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/

alt attributes are also *required* for img tags under HTML4+ (they're
optional but recommended for input type="image")

Cheers
Martin
_______________________________________________
email: martin at easyweb.co.uk             PGP ID:	0xA835CCCB
	martin at members.evolt.org      snailmail:	30 Shandon Place
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   url:	http://www.easyweb.co.uk			Scotland
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