one day I am going to meet the title attribute in a dark alley and we are going to have WORDS

[deborah]

In the bug tracking system jira, which I use all day, the alt attribute for several of the images has moved to the title attribute -- and been removed from the alt. (One way in which sighted people use alt text: my dictation software allows me to dictate the name of a link, and if the user agent supports it, which Firefox and Opera both do, I can also dictate the alternative text for a link. Which would be easier if I could easily see the alt text, but if it's a site I use all the time, like jira or dreamwidth, I can make it work.)

Yes, I'm going to report this bug to the makers of jira. Eventually. When I find a spare spoon lying around somewhere. But if I could fix just one thing about the way people misunderstand accessibility, that one thing would be making sure that people who write webpages understand what the title attribute on images does and does not do.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

But don't you understand? The people who write webpages want the top three things to do right and a list of the five mistakes not to make and they surely don't want to comprehend why the accessibility hooks are there.

/bitter