Accessibility alt text

[michaelvdo]

Hi,

Awesome guideline on frontend development!

I have a suggestion for the alt text attribute section, specifically for the 'bullet' example. Why would I not just add '-' as the alt text for bullet.gif, since that would be a fairly accurate semantic (and textual) representation of the bullet image? Otherwise it might be a good idea to just use the CSS property list-style-item.

Source: W3C

Best, Michael

[taitems]

I wonder what a screen reader would read that as, as an aside. Would it pronounce it as a “dash”, “hyphen” or “minus”?

Interestingly enough I think accessibility for screenreaders has moved away from representing every single item accurately, and is much more accepting of “is this alt text value worth reading aloud?”

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On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 8:51 PM, Michael van den Oudenalder
notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi,
Awesome guideline on frontend development!
I have a suggestion for the alt text attribute section, specifically for the 'bullet' example. Why would I not just add '-' as the alt text for bullet.gif, since that would be a fairly accurate semantic (and textual) representation of the bullet image? Otherwise it might be a good idea to just use the CSS property list-style-item.
Source: W3C

Best, Michael

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#40

[michaelvdo]

Hmm, interesting point about how a screen reader would pronounce it, if at all. I'd have to try one out to know it!

Regardless of screen readers reading the alt values or not (or judging whether it is worth reading), would it not be better to just use list-style-item? It takes away the consideration to write an alt text or not (you can't) and it might even boost screen reader performance. You could even consider it more semantic to use list-style-item rather than <img alt=""> for bullet points. On the other hand, if you want the images to be visible even when CSS is turned off, then <img> is the way to go.

What do you think?

Best, Michael