The current specification of an OSLC Compact UI Preview defines an icon as part of the specification but does not provide a means to provide any accessibility information about that icon. As a consequence, when the compact preview information is displayed, the visualization is not accessible (fails to provide an alternative explanation of an image).
The nub of the issue here is that the compact UI Preview defines an icon as simply a resource (a reference to an image file) but it does not allow information about that icon to be provided that is needed for to render "accessible" HTML markup. Property Value-type Occurs Description oslc:icon Resource zero-or-one URI of an image which may be used in the display of a link to the resource. The image SHOULD be 16x16 pixels in size. When the UI renders the icon, we'll display something like: <img class="iconNode" dojoattachpoint="iconNode" src=" https://rqmx64a.rtp.raleigh.ibm.com:9443/qm/web/com.ibm.asq.common.web/ui/internal/images/icons/obj16/qm_testcase16.gif "> The accessibility issue is that there is no title or alt property associated with the image. The icon conveys information (it's commonly a visual representation of the "type" of the thing being previewed). Since the icon conveys information accessibility standards require that the alt or title (or both) properties be set on the img tag with a meaningful string assigned to them. None of the values currently in the compact rendering specification are suitable for use as the alt/title text for the icon. (So we leave alt/title unvalued and accessibility checking software immediately flags the rendered icon as failing accessibility). There are a couple of ways this could be solved. One mechanism used in some other standards is to simply allow the title/alt text (and potentially other HTML attributes) to be specified as arguments on the URI used to specify the image, e.g., "foobar.com/fancy_icon.gif?title=Fancy Pants Icon". The other mechanism would be to add an attribute to the specification "Icon-alt-text" or some such thing. In most uses, a single string is used as both the alt and title property of an img tag (the two properties serve a very similar purpose), so only one value is needed. There are odd cases where someone might really want the alt text to be lengthier then the title text (the title text is displayed in a tooltip, the alt text is handed to screen readers and displayed if the icon doesn't load). The need for specifying the alt/title text for the icon is rather pressing. Longer term, there may be a need to allow other kinds of HTML properties to be specified (which is why some standards just throw these properties, as needed, onto the URI instead of making them separate attributes). For example, there is talk that both the lang and dir attributes may need to be set on icons (some globalization people have been clamoring for this). So in deciding how to best handle alt/title text, we may want to think about possible (similar) future needs,. -- Bill Andreas Senior Designer Rational Software
