What the developer has done is designate sections of the image as
linking to particular URLs. That's called an imagemap. But he has not
provided alternate text for those links for screen readers to read out.
If you go to the second image and have group elements turned on,
VoiceOver says "group image". If you enter the group you can move from
link to link with Control-Option-Right. All you hear at each link is the
word "link". And when you open the Link List, the links are not listed.
Quite what VoiceOver or WebKit should provide as link text for these
unlabeled links is open to debate. The main information they have to go
on is the image's ALT text (in this case the silly message about
enabling images) and the web address the link's point to. Web addresses
can sometimes be a quite opaque strings of characters and numbers, so
simply reading web addresses outright can be tricky.
I think it's a bug that nothing gets inserted in the Link List, however.
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Jed Barton wrote:
alright, try bringing up a links list. I can't seem to do it.
It says link choser menu, but there are no links.
Any thoughts?
On Dec 2, 2007, at 5:21 PM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
Sometimes web developers use images in web pages to depict text,
usually in order to achieve specific typographical or graphical
effects that are not possible when styling HTML text. This is best
avoided where possible, as text in images cannot be restyled to suit
the preferences of the end-user. Usually, images are used only for
special elements of the page like navigation items, buttons, and
headings. But in really bad implementations, developers use them for
body text. That is the case with the scanworcester.com homepage.
One of the ways to put images into an HTML page is to use the IMG
element. When you do that, you're supposed to provide a text
equivalent for the image using the ALT attribute of the image. This
ALT text can be substituted for the image when using a browser that
does not support images, when images are disabled, when images fail to
load, and when browsing the page with a screen reader or aural browser.
The scanworcester.com homepage developer is misusing the ALT attribute
as an error message in the event that images are disabled. Rather than
specifying a text equivalent for the embedded image, he is using the
ALT text: "Images must be enabled in your browser. Optimal resolution:
800x600 or greater". In other words, it is the developer who created
that message not VoiceOver or Safari. He or she apparently does not
know the proper purpose of the ALT attribute, and has only considered
the case of images being disabled.
Hope that helps.
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Jed Barton wrote:
Hey guys, alright, got a minor problem.
I'm trying to navigate a sight,
scanworcester.com
It's a live scanner feed where i can use itunes to hear audio.
When i load the sight, it's saying i have to have immages enabled on
my browser.
I went in to voiceover and it said they are enabled. Did i miss
something, perhaps in the browser?
Where should i check to see if they are enabled?
Thanks,
Jed
