![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 |
I've rewritten the lead as a placeholder until we get the issues resolved. This takes into account Jared Smith's advice but without going all the way down that road. I'll also be adding something to this effect to the MoS in place of the current text.
Alternative text ( alt text) is text that replaces an image for text-only users. An example of an image with a caption and separate alt text is
[[File:Tall red vase.jpg|thumb|The vase that was thrown at the president's head is now in the National Museum of American History.|alt=A tall red vase]]
. Alt text is aimed at visually impaired readers who use screen readers, which translate the contents of pages into speech; at readers who use browsers with images turned off for whatever reason; and at indexing bots. [1]Non-decorative images should have an alt attribute in the
|alt=
parameter. Without an alt attribute, screen readers may read out the file name or repeat the caption. Filling in an alt attribute need not involve adding a separate description of the image: where the caption or nearby text is sufficiently descriptive or evocative, the alt attribute can be|alt=see caption
or|alt=see adjacent text
. [2] Where additional alt text is deemed appropriate, it must comply with the content policies and should offer only descriptions that can be verified by any reader without specialist knowledge. Its length will depend on the context, but it should be as succinct as possible so that readers are not burdened by unnecessary words—a good rule of thumb is that seven words is often enough, while more detailed images may require 20 words or more. Images that are purely decorative, such as images in templates, should be given a null or empty alt attribute such as |alt=|link=. [3]
{{
cite book}}
: External link in |chapterurl=
(
help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl=
ignored (|chapter-url=
suggested) (
help)
alt
attribute to describe the function of each visual". W3C Quality Assurance Tips for Webmasters. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
Does anyone know what we need to write for regular (non-decorative) images to produce an empty alt attribute? Jared Smith said alt="", but someone above said that wouldn't work. What does work? SlimVirgin TALK contribs 09:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
For specifying no alt text the HTML syntax is alt=""
or alt=" "
(note the space), since MediaWiki will display the default alt text if it is empty or null we need to use |alt=
(HTML escape code for a space). However this was rejected at the time since one screen reader (Orca) would read the link title attribute (the tooltip) instead. But since the default alt text update, this attribute is omitted entirely (and thereby breaking our linking convention). —
Dispenser
22:30, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Myself and User Tuxedo junction are unsure as to the descriptive alt of the picture in this infobox of this article Hermaphrodite, issue is about sexuality, man, woman? Please comment, thanks. Off2riorob ( talk) 19:37, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm wondering if our "see caption" kludge for cases where MediaWiki prevents us saying nothing, is really a wise choice of words. For starters, the words will prefix the caption in the spoken stream of words. Secondly, perhaps "see" isn't the best choice. Thirdly, once this MediaWiki limitation is ever fixed, we're going to want a standard piece of text to search and destroy. I'll chuck "thumb" into the pot as a random suggestion for this situation. Colin° Talk 22:54, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
I have gotten into an edit war as to whether an alt text should include the words "a neat goatee". To me, that violates NPOV. I need ideas. Woogee ( talk) 21:00, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Some of my articles have now been edited with alt text. In general, I think it is a good idea to have alt text messages for those who cannot see the images but I have difficulty in reading them myself because they disappear after a few seconds. Can anyone tell me whether there is a simple way of keeping the alt text message open long enough for it to be read in full? At the moment, the only way I can read the messages properly is to go into edit mode. -- Ipigott ( talk) 11:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Please note that this page has been nominated to be
consolidated with the primary
Manual of Style page. Please join the discussion at the MOS talk page in order to discus the possibility of merging this page with the MOS. Thank you.
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs)
14:39, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
First let me say that I commend the good intentions behind all of this.
Though I've been aware for some time that FAs have alternative text, it's only today that I've first read the project page. It amazes me. Here's its very first example:
I'm not blind and I have not made any serious study of web usability for the blind (or anybody else). So I may be very wrong when I speculate that neither half of this -- neither what's before the pipe nor what's after it -- would be of any interest to a blind person hearing this page. Indeed, if this were my page and I were writing the XHTML directly rather than going through the Mediawiki preprocessor, I might do away with the regular caption and instead have the tag read
thereby clearing the whole thing, caption and all, out of the way of any blind hearer.
I realize both that I haven't thought about the partially sighted and that I could be very, very wrong in my speculation about the blind.
(NB I am not expressing my disapproval of alternative text in general. The project page also has examples that I imagine would be very helpful.) -- Hoary ( talk) 15:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
There is an enormous amount of work to be done in making worthwhile graphics worthwhile for all. As an example, try this section of "Education in Finland". (If you're sighted, that is. If you're blind, please don't bother -- for now, at least.) -- Hoary ( talk) 00:24, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Some alt text describes that such and such is to the left, and such and such in the upper right, while such and such is further to the left, etc. Some of this is quite complicated to follow. I am wondering if such wording should be discouraged. Thoughts? Tuxedo junction ( talk) 21:22, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
We currently have a problem that the content of this page disagrees with the message given to anyone on the talk page. We need to settle this description=wrong issue as it permeates the page. There's little point maintaining the current text if every reply posted here is totally at odds with it.
Are there cases where a short description is required? For example, the design of a flag that is red with a star in the top left. If we decide that is not something we describe in alt text (but instead merely say "Flag of XXX") should we insist that the information conveyed by the image is instead contained in the body text. If so, does that belong here or some other accessibility guideline? Should we burden our sighted readers with information on a person's appearance in a bibliographic article, when that appearance (they are white, they have brown hair, they wear glasses and have a beard) is quite obvious from the photo?
We could do with some FAQ guidance on colour (nothing intrinsically wrong with it) or spacial references like left and right (again, nothing wrong with those). While I agree with Malleus that these might be "signs" that the wrong approach is taken, our guidance should take care not to blame the wrong thing. There's an ignorance that blind people have no concept of colour (or of the meanings society gives to colour) or of up, down, left and right. Colin° Talk 22:44, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
We also have to leave something down to editorial judgment. For the same reason I'd be very opposed to mandating that images must be described somewhere in the text. SlimVirgin talk contribs 17:58, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
We have three audiences for alt text. The visually impaired, those with images turned off and indexing bots. The first of these is our primary concern IMO and there is pressure to meet their needs both from regulatory agencies (government guidelines, W3C guidelines) and morally. The second is an editorial/community judement of no more concern than whether to write a Pokemon article, take and upload a picture, or support a client O/S or browser. Editor consensus to serve that audience better might appear and be enshrined in a guideline recommendation, but I don't see any groundswell yet. If editors choose to aid the second reader, we should offer guidance on how best to do so, but not yet request (to any degree) that they do. The latter (bots) is of zero concern to editors on Wikipedia IMO. If Google Image Search can't work out what our image is based on either the caption, the article title, or the image's own page here or at Commons, then Google need to improve their algorithms, not request we write for them. If they find our alt text useful then that's a bonus but we certainly shouldn't request our editors write text aimed at bots. I suggest this guideline be weighted according to the above, giving most space to the needs of visually impaired readers and a short amount of space to the issue of some readers having images turned off. Colin° Talk 07:38, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed during the last couple of days that the alt text no longer appears when the mouse hovers over an image. This is occurring both in IE 8.x and Firefox 3.6.x. The alt text in infoboxes still works, but not on images within articles. Just curious and am unsure where else to look for why this suddenly is happening. • Astynax talk 18:42, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
It is clear that the current guideline text no longer has consensus support; it isn't an official guideline any more. The guideline is far too long, with too many lengthy examples, and spends too long on rare situations. The examples don't need the mini-essay "flawed alt text". In addition, there are contentious aspects of writing good alt text that (a) haven't been fully resolved and (b) may ultimately reflect editor preference or the preferences of one reader.
I think we should split the guideline in two. Have a short core guideline that covers the essentials both conceptually and in practice, with relatively few examples. The intention is that this would later be re-adopted into the MOS. The second page should contain more examples with longer rationale and also cover the unusual image types that appear on few articles. That page would have no official status as a WP Guideline and its talk page could become a place where editors ask for and offer advice.
Would anyone mind if I took an axe to this page and worked on it directly. Or would it be better to work on a draft version first? Any thoughts on a name for the second example/how-to page?
Colin° Talk 19:22, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
I've made a start on an overhauled version of this guideline
in my sandbox here. It has no equivalent of the "other examples" section but I think it is the better for it. A long guideline is off-putting. I think an extensive set of examples and solved-problems should go on another page, separate from the guideline which should focus on principles and core practicalities. The biggest difference from the current guideline, is the change of focus from the alt
text attribute to the principle of providing a text alternative. When that text alternative is satisfied by the caption, then the alt
text attribute becomes superfluous. As far as drawing advice from the many sources we found, I didn't get much beyond the W3C pages. So there's more advice we could include. I cover the problem with blank alt text not doing what we'd hope it would do, and provide a new solution I think is an improvement. It is a very rough draft so please don't slag off the prose. I've had to fix the related guideline
Wikipedia:Extended image syntax#Alt text and caption because what it said differed substantially from reality. See my
User:Colin/Alt sandbox page for where I experimented with different syntax.
Is this closer to something we can agree on? The lead paragraph is probably a little too purist and you should read the advice later before shooting it down. For example, "provides the same information as an image" needs to be qualified that we are talking about just the information the image provides that is essential for this article; images contain lots of information that we don't need. Thoughts? Feel free to edit it and use the talk page. Colin° Talk 21:50, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
I found "strange" alt text on Derek Jeter and was told the proper format for alt captions is to not use proper names. This seems absurd. Your example is this: Headshot of a young man with wavy hair, a high forehead, and deep-set eyes. That seems horrible. Why not, "Van Gogh, displayed as a young man with wavy hair..."
Just putting the text "a man" is pointless. Which man? Why is that man important? Why is that man on the article?? If you actually name the person in the picture, with a description, this is far more sensible than the current method. I can't imagine that people who actually use the "alt" captions find the current method acceptable. — Timneu22 · talk 18:17, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
The guideline for alt-text on Wikipedia was recently demoted after consensus no longer supported the approach taken. Expert opinion suggested we should rethink. I have prepared a draft revision in a sandbox here that I believe is a better starting-point for us to begin afresh with a new approach to alt-text. It also corrects a number of technical errors. I propose the current text be replaced by this draft revision. Colin° Talk 13:38, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure about this: Alt text that contains just a nonsense filler such as "*" or "-" is annoying, and wordy text such as "refer to adjacent text" becomes tedious. The least-bad solution to this is to supply a word that is at least minimally useful to the reader. A suggestion is therefore to supply the single word "photograph", "painting", "sculpture", etc. When combined with a caption, the result "photograph Tony Blair meeting George Bush" or "painting Napoleon Bonaparte" should be acceptable.
For the most part I agree, but it seems tedious to add "photograph", or "painting", etc., throughout every page on WP. Isn't there a way that the text could be omitted altogether, and possibly some automatic text would be used? Is the automatic text even necessary? I guess I'm just thinking that there are hundreds of thousands of photos with self-explanatory captions; is it really necessary to add "alt=photograph"? My two cents. — Timneu22 · talk 17:52, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
alt=|
" (or miss it off in the certain cases that MediaWiki handles properly) and the screen reader would ignore the image, leaving just the caption. I should probably create a MediaWiki bug report to suggest this, but given the glacial speed such bugs are dealt with, it could be years before anyone does anything about it. As I said, I'm trying to find the least-bad solution. Nobody should have to suffer "
slash toothbrush underscore x three underscore two zero zero five zero seven one six underscore zero zero two".
Colin°
Talk
18:27, 9 April 2010 (UTC)alt
text. Removing the caption is usually also not an option as sighted readers won't see the alt text. As for any software change to automatically achieve these effects, well we might as well ask for the no-links skin software change, so that blank alt text can be done just like other websites do.
Colin°
Talk
22:36, 9 April 2010 (UTC)alt
text" attribute. If the former, would you please stop abbreviating it as it is very confusing. Either way, I can't make head nor tail of your comment. Could you give an example or two.
Colin°
Talk
09:10, 10 April 2010 (UTC)The half-a-dozen comments I've received here and on the draft talk page suggest the draft text is an improvement we can work with. So, since this is a wiki, I have moved it out of my sandbox into Wikipedia so we can collaborate on it here. I'm keen to email our experts to ask if they would review version 2.0 to see if it meets their approval, and that is best done if they are viewing the real thing rather than my personal sandbox. Lastly, I want folk to start trying to apply this new approach to see if it works and then to incorporate what we discover back into the guidance.
Not only does the new alt-guidance take a different approach to the old one, but it is also shorter, which I think is important. It does cover gallery, timeline, maths, chemistry, maps, and diagrams, but it doesn't give lengthy examples of these. The Wikipedia help pages for those elements should cover the syntax for specifying the alt text; this page should worry about what to write. Colin° Talk 21:03, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Extended content
| ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Timneu22 ( talk · contribs) hid the Nutshell in this edit, saying "sorry, that nutshell was entirely confusing. I'm not sure what's trying to be said. please fix and uncomment". I've undone the HTML hiding as it means nobody can see the text to comment on it. What do other people think about the nutshell? The WCAG guideline is "Provide text alternatives for any non-text content". It later qualifies this "text alternative" as needing to "serve the same purpose and present the same information". The nutshell is currently
Which adapts this for our purposes (images) and restricts the "same information" to a more reasonable demand (context-relevant). The problem with just "same information" is, as other commentators have said about the WCAG guideline, that a picture is worth a thousand words: it contains more information than the context requires. Perhaps there's another way of saying "context-relevant"? Colin° Talk 07:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
|
After some discussion above, it seems that there should be a help page on the alt text topic. Before getting started, I've looked around to see where current information is located. Here's what we have.
Proposal:
That being said, I'm not sure if there is enough text to add to a Help page. As an example, WP:CAPTION has no corresponding help page. — Timneu22 · talk 17:29, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
There was a section 'External review', which was most important in the change of the status of the guideline. This section I cannot find on this page or any of the archives. I suggest it's recovered somehow. Regards, SunCreator ( talk) 20:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that the the "alt text and caption" section of the image syntax page says that the caption will be used if no alt text exists. Doesn't that mean that, currently, every image with a caption (and no alt text) will have the caption repeated by screen readers? If so, isn't this a huge problem? Do we need a bot? (And if it's not a huge problem, isn't the section on this page about "blank alt" problem contradictory?) — Timneu22 · talk 17:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
The problem with the Extended image syntax page is that for legacy reasons, it refers to the "anything not already recognised" parameter as the Caption (it is bold-italic for a reason -- it is just a parameter name, and not a very good one). The wiki syntax should have had separate alt, title and caption attributes and that syntax page wouldn't be half as confusing as it is. See User:Colin/Alt for a test page with all the permutations. There are no situations where the alt text is repeated as the visible caption text, so the text never gets repeated by screen readers. Within the combinations, there are cases where MediaWiki spits out the filename as alt text (yuk) and cases where it is blank yet is also a link so the screen reader spits out the file name (yuk). Colin° Talk 18:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
link=
). Efforts were made to spread the use of the link=
parameter for decorative icons. The some developer made a change, and suddenly it wasn't working anymore. Now we have to use both link=
and alt=
. For example: [[Image:Imbox notice.png|28x28px|alt=|link=]]
. That's why we need to have an accessibility expert working with the developers. Does someone knows how to contact the Wikimedia Foundation and how to convince them to employ an accessibility expert?Responding to the
Village pump request, I've created a script which will move image attribution links into the footer. To install this script add {{subst:JS|User:Dispenser/imageunlink.js}}
to your
skin's script page. I have only tested in Firefox 3.6 with the Monobook, Vector, and Modern skins. —
Dispenser
19:53, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Not all screen reader users are totally blind. Some have partial sight, and either use screen readers in addition to screen magnifiers, or only use screen readers because reading text is too slow for them. I also know of a fully sighted computer user who uses screen readers because he has severe dyslexia. Screen reader users can interrupt their speech synthesizers at any time; personally, when I know that a filename is coming up, I just press down arrow to interrupt the text and move to the next line.
I originally wrote the above text at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Javascript_help_needed_with_experiment_on_image_links_and_alt_text. However it was suggested that I copy it here, so that's what I've done. I thought it would be a good idea to note how people use screen readers. Graham 87 14:01, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
I would like to talk about accessibility at Wikimania 2010, and convince the Foundation and the developers to care about accessibility. That is a necessary step. I'd like to give a conference about accessibility there, inspired from the conference about Wikipedia two french accessibility experts held 7 months ago. Is someone willing to come with me ? User:Sj is interested in accessibility and will come to Wikimania 2010. Dodoïste ( talk) 14:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Some potential solutions to the "blank alt text problem" could involve editions (skins) of WP that work better with assistive technology. Dodoïste seems dogmatically opposed to such an idea, which I think is a mistake. The guideline cited above discourages "text-only versions" on the grounds that they tend not to be kept up-to-date and that proper application of other guidelines make them unnecessary. The former doesn't apply to WP: the HTML we see is generated from Wiki markup which is ignorant of the final appearance. The latter is a matter of opinion that ultimately can only be tested through experiment. Currently, WP's HTML is suboptimal for users of screen readers.
The typical web user is changing. People are increasingly surfing on Netbooks, PDAs, mobile phones and even their television. Some may use Wikipedia through a different client than a web browser. Editions of WP for these different technologies are being developed; assistive technology variants could benefit from variants too.
WP also has two kinds of user: reader and editor. The former greatly outnumber the latter yet the UI is designed round the latter. Many people read Wikipedia via mirror or other reference sites, which provide their own HTML variants and don't allow editing.
This is somewhat off-topic for this guideline, but I just want to encourage any technology-change discussion to be open-minded about the solutions. If we do "convince the Foundation and the developers to care about accessibility" we should allow them freedom to develop a solution in consultation with experts, rather than impose a solution or restrict the options. Colin° Talk 17:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
I have tried restarting my IE 8.0, I also rebooted my computer, I even switched over to Firefox, and I still cannot see the alt text when I mouseover an image that contains the alt command. The mouseover works when I hover the mouse over a link, but not when I try to view the accessibility alt codes for images. What am I doing wrong? Is the alt code mouseover function blacked out? Is this adversely affecting blind users of Wikipedia?
— Paine (
Ellsworth's
Climax)
07:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
And now I'm seeing the tooltip again when I mouseover. Go figure.
— Paine (
Ellsworth's
Climax)
03:27, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
This guidance is badly written and self-contradicting. It extols us "where [an image] has been chosen to illustrate what [a person] looked like—the alternative text should describe his appearance" and at the same time says "[an image showing the appearance of Elizabeth II] should not be described as "an elderly lady wearing a yellow dress". So, now I am unclear as to whether the alt text [1] I removed from Elizabeth II, which is solely used to describe her appearance, should have been left in after all. Guidelines this long and confusing are unlikely to be followed. DrKiernan ( talk) 18:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Template:Infobox NBA Player needs to be made WP:ALT compliant.-- TonyTheTiger ( T/ C/ BIO/ WP:CHICAGO/ WP:FOUR) 23:45, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The guidelines seem to have changed dramatically since I last looked yet I can find do record of any discussion to this end. Can someone please tell me what's going on? As far as I was aware the purpose of alt text was to aid blind and partially sighted readers by providing them with a description of images in articles. I really don't see the point of using alt-text to effectively just duplciate a caption. Cavie78 ( talk) 22:09, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
There are problems with the edits made 3rd June. Sorry this is so long, but I've mostly reverted them so feel I have to justify why.
Firstly, they heavily promote the "Refer to caption" or "Refer to adjacent text" alt-text suggestion, which is actually one of the options the guideline was changed to discourage. The lead text now suggests this along with a reference to two sources. However, neither of those sources make that suggestion, and I haven't seen any alt text guideline suggesting that approach. I ask that we consider whether a screen-reader user wants to hear those deeply unhelpful words several times every time she reads a Wikipedia article. The caption is spoken next anyway and the reader is reading the adjacent text anyway. If we don't need to write alt-text then we should ensure we write as next-to-nothing as possible, and what we do write shouldn't be annoying.
Secondly, many of the edits indicate a misunderstanding of the what this guideline is about, and what all "alternative text" guidelines are about. The W3C and Wikipedia guidelines are about providing alternative text for images. They are not about writing alt
text attributes in HTML or Wiki markup, though that is one solution. This "alternative text" may be in the alt
text attribute, or the caption or the body text.
Thirdly, the edits fail to maintain the natural progression of the guideline and the purposes of each section. Instead, suggestions for alt-text wording are scattered throughout. The guideline was written with a planned order. We explain the who and why of alternative text. We explain some of the syntax involved and the other elements such as captions and link titles. We give some general advice. Once the reader has a grounding in the issues and technicalities, we then give detailed advice on the alt
text attribute. Lastly we discuss the problem of blank alt text. Then, as an appendix, we give a number of examples.
alt
attribute is even explained to the reader (third paragraph of the lead). Let's keep the lead paragraph dealing with the what and why of alternative text, without getting bogged down in one technical approach, and one that isn't particularly good. The two sources given here are already in the references.alt
attribute is and some tooltip details to the start of the Audience section. Why? This is nothing to do with audience the audience section deals with "alternative text", not just "alt
text". It also shortened the section header "Caption, alt, link and title" to "Caption" but the content still referred to links and titles. How about "Image syntax elements" as a section heading.alt
attribute when composing alternative text." That sentence seems to be good advice in a section on Context. Why remove it?Please can we discuss "blank alt text" solutions such as "refer to caption" before re-introducing them. If there are issues with the order that information is presented, let's discuss how to improve that. But there is a plan to the current order and littering the guideline with suggestions out-of-order will make it a confusing mess. Colin° Talk 09:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Colin, you reverted all the changes I made on June 3, including the simple copy-editing that I felt tightened it and made the structure flow a little better. [5] I haven't restored those changes, but I did restore "refer to caption" or "refer to adjacent text" as options, but only as options. [6] I hope that's a sufficient compromise.
I'm willing to look around for examples, but I'm not entirely clear what kinds of examples you'd like. SlimVirgin talk contribs 01:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Here is an example I've referred to before from Death of Ian Tomlinson, about a British man who died during a G-20 protest after being pushed to the ground by a police officer.
I'm offering this as an example of when alt=refer to caption would be appropriate. The actual alt text I added to this image was a tediously long description of it—this was before the guideline changed:
A small crowd scene. On the right, four people dressed in uniform, their heads and face mostly not visible, wearing yellow and blue jackets, black trousers and black shoes. They are carrying long thin sticks, and round transparent shields. On the left, there are three men. One is on the ground, sitting with his legs straight out, and his arms raised, looking at the people dressed in uniform. He is wearing a grey and blue top and black trousers with a white stripe. Two men are leaning over him; one is holding his arms. The latter is wearing a dark hooded top, grey trousers with white stripes, and has a grey and blue bag over his shoulders.
SlimVirgin talk contribs 09:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Normal viewing | Screen reader | Rationale | |
---|---|---|---|
[[File:Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police.jpg|200px|thumb|left|alt=refer to caption|Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police after being pushed to the ground, minutes before he died.]]
| |||
![]() |
link graphic refer to caption. Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police after being pushed to the ground, minutes before he died. | Article:
Ian Tomlinson The purpose of the image is to show a scene from the events where Ian Tomlinson was interacting with the police prior to his death. The caption describes the image and also contains additional information ("minutes before he died") that is not present in the image. | |
[[File:Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police.jpg|200px|thumb|left|alt=Photograph|Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police after being pushed to the ground, minutes before he died.]]
| |||
![]() |
link graphic Photograph. Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police after being pushed to the ground, minutes before he died. | Article:
Ian Tomlinson The purpose of the image is to show a scene from the events where Ian Tomlinson was interacting with the police prior to his death. The caption describes the image and also contains additional information ("minutes before he died") that is not present in the image. |
How is the "refer to caption" option an improvement on the "photograph" option? It advises the reader to do something he's about to do anyway (read/hear the caption). It implies the reader has come to the wrong place for information and needs to be referred elsewhere. It is tediously wordy and will just be annoying in an FA with a dozen similar photographs. I dread to think how tedious a FL with thirty photographs might be. Colin° Talk 10:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
(responding to comment above) Actually, the article was quite clear on the difference between "alternative text" and "alt
text" until
this edit which conflated the two in the lead sentence. The word "alt
" when referring to the attribute, was always formatted in code style (at least that was the plan, perhaps some escaped formatting). The guideline used that word exclusively for a wikimarkup attribute, as do our best sources. Yes this page needs to be clear on the meaning of terms. Perhaps before you make the guideline any more confusing, we might agree on them on the talk page, and you might consider reverting that particular terminology mistake. I'm not "throwing around" terms. I'm using the official W3C terms. What terms are you using?
Colin°
Talk
10:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Further review of the above edit (with summary "rewrote first few lines and nutshell to reflect source"). The existing text actually matched the source (the W3C definition of "alternative text") and the edit replaced it with the WebAIM source and text based on that source, using their terminology. I resent the implication that the existing text didn't reflect the source.
IMO the WebAIM terminology ("content and function") is weaker than the W3C terminology ("same information" / "equivalent purpose"). If you are interested in why, I'll explain, but I suspect I'm wasting my breath here.
The lead now completely confuses the distinction between "alt
text" the attribute value and "alternative text" the concept. I'm seeing carefully chosen words and correctly used terms being ripped up and replaced by a confused mess. The article used to have a flow where each section had a purpose and introduced concepts before using them, described problems before offering solutions. My attempts to explain what was wrong with certain edits just gets ignored; they are reinserted without discussion.
Is there any point in me watching or contributing to this page? Colin° Talk 12:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Let's go through it bit by bit, starting with the first paragraph. Can you say exactly what is wrong with it? It seems very clear to me, and it's sourced to WebAim.
Alternative text (alt text) is a textual alternative to images. The point of alt text is to allow the content and function of an image to be understood by text-only readers. It is displayed by browers when images are not displayed, is read out loud by screen readers for those with visual impairment, and is used by search engines to determine the content of an image.
And if your objection is that alternative text and alt text are not the same thing, please link to a source that says that, so I can read it for myself. SlimVirgin talk contribs 15:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
alt
attribute term, to distinguish it from the alternative text concept.alt
attribute for the short text alternative, as one means of doing so. The W3C requirements pages aren't particularly easy to navigate. However, I believe they have been very careful and precise with their words. I believe the above title: "that serves the same purpose and presents the same information as the non-text content" is the best definition of alternative text you will find on the web. It is better than WebAIM's definition. But I'll deal with that later.alt
should be reserved for markup attributes and presented in a code font like WebAIM do?
Colin°
Talk
18:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)alt
attribute is a subset of the text that constitutes "alternative text". Therefore the WebAim quote you give makes sense. The alt
attribute text is part of the alternative text for the image and must obey the requirements for a text alternative. However, the alternative text is not equal to the alt
attribute text. The caption on the other hand, might satisfy the need for a text alternative but isn't so constrained by the rules.alt
". When you write your FAs, you don't use abbreviations; it isn't a professional thing to do. Similarly, when careful sources talk about providing a text alternative for an image, they don't use the abbreviation alt. Both WebAIM and W3C only use the word alt
when referring to the HTML attribute.I've tweaked the writing in a way that I hope addresses your concern:
Alternative text (alt text) is a textual alternative to images. The point of alt text is to allow the content and function of an image to be understood by text-only readers. When alt text is added after an image, such as
|alt=A painting of Napoleon Bonaparte
, that text is displayed by browers when images are not displayed, is read out loud by screen readers for those with visual impairment, and is used by search engines to determine the content of the image. [1]
SlimVirgin talk| contribs 05:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Comments
Colin has asked me to comment on this discussion. It is sad to see two of Wikipedia's finest contributors at loggerheads, but having spent most of yesterday and this morning trying to get heart of the matter I think I can understand why. This is the situation as I see it: Editors will come to this page because they need help with an article they are editing. They will want to find quickly solutions to problems with alternative text for images and then return to their work on "their" article. Other editors, those reviewing FACs for example, will need fuller guidance that includes explanations of the limitations of the alt attribute in wiki mark-up. Wiki software developers may read it with a view to improving accessibility.
I think the version Colin last edited while well-structured, comprehensive and accurately sourced was not helpful to editors looking for a quick solution and is difficult to understand in parts on first reading, particularly those lacking expertise, such as Colin's, in mark-up functionality. This is not helped by the attribute's being called "alt", which I think still is a source of confusion for readers. And I think SV's motivation to offer clear practical advice to readers seeking a quick solution is admirable.
I installed Fangs yesterday and read a few articles to gain a deeper understanding of the experience of those of us who use screen readers. I have to agree with Colin in that expression such as "refer to" or even worse "see" would be tedious in the extreme and could give the impression of laziness. (But, to try to get this into perspective, the most tedious of all was the references, which are read out for example as "This page link left bracket eighty-two right bracket"!)
I agree with SV in that you should "combine your strengths" but would add that you should acknowledge your weaknesses. The current article is not an improvement on the version last edited by Colin and errors have been introduced with regard to the function of the alt attribute and the expression "alternative text", which are different things. On the other hand, the earlier version is confusing to those seeking practical help. I think it has to be made clear:
Please don't fall out with me for saying but I think the emphasis should be on practical help and clear explanation, rather than a well-sourced article. Your strengths are expertise and clear writing. Your weaknesses are impatience, and an outsider reading the above might perceive a little arrogance too. Graham. Graham Colm ( talk) 13:25, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm just catching up and it will take me a while. I'm greatly indebted to GrahamColm for helping and for the considerable time he has spent getting up to speed with the issue. I agree with SV there are only two concepts. My point is that our best sources are careful never to use the word "alt" wrt the first (alternative text) and furthermore some use a code font for "alt
" when referring to the attribute to further emphasise this is an HTML markup keyword, not an abbreviation of an English word. WebAIM use the term "alt attribute" for the HTML attribute and any text it contains (hence a missing alt attribute (no 'alt="..."') is different from empty alt text (i.e., 'alt=""') and they use "alt text" to mean the text supplied for the alt attribute. They use the full "alternative text" for the overall text requirement which may be met by a caption, say. W3C are similar, though they tend to say "text alternative" and only a very minor part of their work even mentions the "alt" HTML attribute. It is clear that writing "alt text" is ambiguous here on WP as various contributors to this page have used it as shorthand to mean the "alternative text" concept and others to mean the HTML (or Wiki) attribute text. Repeatedly asking for a source that explicitly says a ≠ b is as pointless to me as someone asking for a source that says London ≠ England. You won't find one but you can tell from the usage by careful writers that they are different things and you can tell from their own individual definitions that they are different things.
Can we please agree that some people find the use of "alt text" as an abbreviation for "alternative text" to be confusing and contrary to the usage in our best sources. There is no need, in professional writing, to abbreviate. Please can we be strict in only using "alternative text" for the guideline/concept. And agree that for the text within the "" of the Wiki image markup's alt
attribute, we can use "alt
attribute text".
Colin°
Talk
08:19, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
The other issue we're trying to decide is what to write when (as you put it) the alt attribute is not "used." We could say "photograph," or "illustration," or where appropriate "refer to caption." What is your suggestion? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 13:42, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I've removed it from the lead, and added to the caption section:
Where the caption is sufficiently descriptive or evocative of the image, or where it makes clear what the function of the image is, one option is to write
|alt=photograph
,|alt=drawing
, or|alt=refer to caption
. Where nearby text in the article performs the same function, it can be|alt=refer to adjacent text
. [2] Editors should use common sense and keep the alt text as tight as possible when the caption suffices, to prevent screen readers reading out unnecessary words.
Is that a compromise we can agree on?
SlimVirgin talk| contribs 18:41, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Placing the versions of the lead side by side for clarification:
Previous | Current |
---|---|
Alternative text is text that serves an equivalent purpose and provides the same essential information as an image in an article, and is intended for text-only users. It should preferably be short, and co-located with the image. If this is not practical, for example because the image presents a lot of information, then a very brief description of the image or overview of the information should be given and a longer text alternative offered elsewhere.
[3]
[1] Absent or unhelpful alternative text is a source of frustration for blind users of the Web.
[4]
An image that is purely decorative (provides no information and serves only an aesthetic purpose) requires no alternative text. Ideally, such images would be ignored by screen readers and text-only browsers [5] but in practice this is not generally possible on Wikipedia. A short text alternative is typically implemented on Wikipedia through a combination of the image
caption and the image
|
![]() With the alt parameter empty, the screenreader would read out the file name: "link graphic slash Jacques hyphen Louis underscore David underscore zero one seven jay pee gee." Alternative text (alt text) is a textual alternative to images. The point of alt text is to allow the content and function of an image to be understood by text-only readers. Alt text can be specified in images with the "
The words after " Alt text should be brief. Where an image presents a lot of information, a short description in the alt parameter can accompany a longer description in the caption or body of the article, where necessary. [3] The alt parameter should not be left empty, because almost all images are also links, and if the parameter is empty screen readers will read out the link filename, such as (for the Napoleon example) "link graphic slash Jacques hyphen Louis underscore David underscore zero one seven jay pee gee."
[6] An image that is purely decorative—for example in a template where the image is not a link—requires no alt text. Where the caption or nearby text are sufficiently descriptive or evocative, or where they make clear what the function of the image is, one option for the alt parameter is to write
|
I think I've more or less finished the copy edit and tightening. It's down from 1875 words to 1059 (the readable prose size doesn't count text in tables or blockquotes). There are a few things I'd like to tighten still, but I'm just about finished for now. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 09:07, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
We give as an example of the audience for alt text "readers who have difficulty understanding visual images." This is a separate category from readers with visual impairment. The source is given as this, but I can't find a reference to it there. What do we mean by "readers who have difficulty understanding visual images"? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 18:33, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
It is worth watchlisting this page just to see what the Queen is wearing each day. :-) Seriously, though... I wanted a simple picture of someone recognisable yet also not blatantly (it could be just an elderly lady in a yellow dress) -- yesterday's picture was too distractingly a queen with a crown. In today's picture, the crowd form a distracting aspect that one might want to include in the alternative text. The yellow dress picture was, I thought, perfect for the task. Locating the image on the left is often not ideal as it breaks up the layout of the text. I wonder if the fact she is not facing into the text, when positioned on the right, could be overlooked. After all, this is a guideline on alternative text, not image composition and layout. Colin° Talk 08:45, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm very glad to see the Dannebrog example back as an example with the original alt
attribute text and rationale. This was one of the most discussed pictures on the talk page and is also a good example of basic alternative text rather than one of the "what to do in this situation" examples. The rationale highlights the "essential information" that the alternative text needs to get across.
Which brings us to one reason why I think the W3C's "serves an equivalent purpose and provides the same essential information" definition of alternative text is considerably better than WebAIM's "content and function". The "content" word all too easily lead the reader into thinking he has to describe the picture ("a flag fluttering on a flag pole..."). Not all content is information and even less is essential to the article. I think "purpose" is better than "function". The words can be interchangeable to some degree but the former implies an active choice by the editor rather than a passive ability/feature of the graphic. It is that difference that is absolutely key to helping the editor write good alternative text. Their thoughts should not be: This is an image that happens to be in the article that I happen to have to write alternative text for. It should be: This is an image that I (or someone else) chose to serve a purpose and provide information, and for which I should ensure is still possible even if the image is not available to the reader.
The rationales were written to show what the editor had actively considered when selecting the picture: "The purpose of the image is...", "a stock photograph chosen to decorate a sound bite ...", "The picture is used to show ...". Considering the "purpose" and then the "information" are two of the four questions that the W3C ask editors to consider for alternative text. We should ensure our example rationales make that thought process explicit. Currently, the Water Fluoridation rationale has been weakened by unnecessary trimming. Colin° Talk 08:45, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Colin, could you discuss your edits here, please, rather than restoring some of the problematic material? I've tried to keep the terms we use as simple as possible, because it's aimed at readers with and without technical knowledge, but your version restored terms that introduce confusion in my view. For example, you use alternative text, alt parameter text, alt text, alt parameter, and alt attribute in ways that are not clear. First of all, please provide a source that shows alt text is not used to mean the same thing as alternative text. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 20:53, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
alt
parameter text, alt
text, alt
parameter, and alt
attribute" need to be used because they are different things (though the second is just a longer way of saying the third). The WebAIM source makes it clear they reserve the term "alternative text" for the text alternative regardless of where it appears and distinguish their use of the abbreviation "alt" for the HTML markup attribute. The "alt=...
" bit is called the "alt
parameter" in Wiki markup and is called the "alt
attribute" in HTML. The words "attribute" and "parameter" are generally synonymous in computer science but it is best to use the terminology used by others than to conflate them here. The web world (and WebAIM) are happy to use the term "alt
text" for the text between the quotes in the alt
attribute (the Wikimarkup doesn't require quotes). They are not happy to use the term "alt text" to mean alternative text regardless of where it appears. These things are all facts. They are verifiable from the sources given. Any attempt to combine them and just use the term "alt text" for all of them just confuses. It is an oversimplification. There is a difference, for example, between not having an alt
parameter at all and having blank alt
text (i.e., "alt=|
"). There is a difference between having no alternative text and having no alt
text. Technical writing requires precision and an appreciation of using the right words.
Colin°
Talk
09:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)From WebAIM:
Examples of the use of "alt text" for the text for the HTML attribute. Note the use of brown code font for "alt".
alt
text is not appropriate."alt
text might be different."alt
text may be appropriate."alt
text) would not provide the important information that the image presents. "alt
text (alt=""
)."alt
text to provide additional information or to provide additional keywords to search engines."In many other cases they refer to the "alt
attribute", because they are concerned with the "alt=""
" bit, not just the text.
To distinguish that "alternative text" means something else, here's the big warning box on their guideline:
alt
attribute will be used when referring to the attribute itself, which often will, but does not exclusively, contain the alternative text.And they conclude with
alt
attribute or in the surrounding context of the image. "They are saying the text may be provided "in the" attribute, in other words, it is between the quotes, or it may appear in a caption.
Colin° Talk 16:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Last night's revert by SlimVirgin removed two changes. One was an attempt to clarify the alt/alternative terms issue and is being discussed above. The second was a significantly improved lead. The baby has been rather thrown out with the bathwater here and I implore SlimVirgin to allow me to reinstall those improvements, minus the contentious issue of alt/alternative naming. Here are the reasons why the lead was improved in this edit:
alt
parameter in the
MediaWiki markup." is the most important sentence in this entire guideline. The lead prior to the edit last night (which was the result of undiscussed edits) did not make this point.Colin° Talk 07:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
SlimVirgin | Colin |
---|---|
Alternative text (alt text) is a textual alternative to images. The point of alt text is to allow the content and function of an image to be understood by text-only readers. Alt text can be specified in images with the "alt= " parameter:
The words after " The alt parameter should not be left empty, because almost all images are links, and if the parameter is empty screen readers will read out the link filename, such as (for the Napoleon example) "link graphic slash Jacques hyphen Louis underscore David underscore zero one seven jay pee gee."
[7] An image that is purely decorative—for example in a template where the image is not a link—requires no alt text. Where the caption or nearby text are sufficiently descriptive or evocative, or where they make clear what the function of the image is, one option for the alt parameter is to write |
Alternative text is text associated with an image that serves the same purpose and conveys the same essential information as the image.
[3] In situations where the image is not available to the reader (perhaps because they have turned off images in their web browser, or are using a
screen reader due to a visual impairment) the alternative text ensures no information or functionality is lost.
[3] Absent or unhelpful alternative text is a source of frustration for blind users of the Web.
[4]
On Wikipedia, alternative text is typically supplied through a combination of the image
caption and the text supplied for the image
The For images that link to their image description page (which is nearly all images on Wikipedia), the An image that is purely decorative (provides no information and serves only an aesthetic purpose) requires no alternative text. Often the caption fully meets the requirements for alternative text. However, the only situation where blank |
SlimVirgin talk| contribs 08:05, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
(from SV's talk) I'm giving you notice that if you carry out your threat to revert Graham's edit, continue to make such threats, or perform similar edits or reverts, then I shall report you for edit warring. I already regard your edits made 9th June as edit warring. Your revert of my edit 22nd June was unjustified and not at all in keeping with our guidelines on reverting. You have twice made accusations against me of making edits without discussion. Those accusations are entirely without foundation and I find them deeply offensive. They are all the more galling because that is precisely the characteristic of your edits that is causing all the trouble. Colin° Talk 17:55, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Forgive me interjecting myself, I came here after seeing Colin's request at WP:RFPP. I wanted to jump into the debate because when I read the first the few paragraphs of this version I cringed at the depressingly familiar sight of an editing guideline that should be for everyone but is actually written as if for a small subset of our editors. The language in the version I linked is far too technical and requires then non-tech-savvy reader to follow a bunch of links to understand it. If a techy section is needed, one could be added later on but the first few paragraphs need to be written for a general audience. Here's a list of totally unsuitable vocabulary in the current lead paragraphs:
All those need to go from the lead section. The version in question is also excessively wordy (reads as if written by committee, which it probably effectively has been) and could stand some trimming. It would also be a good idea to juxtapose the image of a Napoleon with a demonstration of what users that do cannot display the image will see and an audio clip of what a screen-reader would produce. CIreland ( talk) 16:34, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
alt=
" somewhere. We can get rid of the others. Here's what I propose:
alt
parameter in the
MediaWiki markup.alt
text" (in a code
font) is used here to refer to the text supplied for the image alt
parameter and which generates text for the
HTML alt attributealt
text" is used here to refer to the text in the image alt
parameteralt
text are both useful ways of supplying alternative text. The wordiness is the least of our problems at present. But if you wish to suggest (in the manner I did above) how to rewrite certain sentences for brevity, then we can all review it and judge it on its merits. What I want to stop now is any edits made without prior discussion and attempts to establish consensus. That's Wikipedia policy for goodness sake. And it is absolutely required where editors are in disagreement. Further reverts will be regarded as edit warring and reported as such.
Colin°
Talk
17:37, 26 June 2010 (UTC)That the changes proposed (16:52, 26 June 2010) by Colin be applied to the lead in an effort to remove unnecessary jargon. I think we can re-word to remove the first two and the fifth use of "alt
parameter". Removing the other two will be harder. I'm running out of time just now. Back later.
Colin°
Talk
17:48, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
FWIW, and despite my remarks below about the standards, this is Wikipedia. I don't think it's necessary to go into as much detail about alt tags etc as you would for web developers. At the same time, I do think the current Wikipedia standard is a bit minimal. The alternative text (wherever placed - it can be in the caption, the alt text or the longtext) for Napoleon, if one were following the AA (replaced by) Priority 1 (A) standard, should be "painting by Carlsberg of Napoleon Bonepart in 1800-frozen to death, at age 106, showing him in the uniform of a French chasseur du cheval and wearing the Blue Star of the Republic. The subject is holding a small dog under his left arm, symbolic of his desire to subdue the nations, and is shown standing in front of a pair of navy blue velvet curtains, which hide a nasty stain on the wall." --
Elen of the Roads (
talk)
20:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
alt=...
" in the correct place, so they need to learn some markup. Perhaps I need to repeat the proposal diffs and to say this is just one step. It is a step that is removing some of the detail about HTML tags and other jargon. I'm not saying that after this proposed change it is perfect.As someone who manages a UK local authority website - which is required to conform to the AA standard (and frequently doesn't! - we are ranked continually [11]), I'd add the following notes.
There is a difference between alt
and the more general notion of alternative text.
this is the W3 guidance on the subject. The alt
tag needs to be used on all images: - icons, buttons, spacers (we lost 50 places in the ranking once when someone put up some pages with a load of white rectangles with no alt tags used as spacers). The standard requires that an image has an alt text and an accompanying text which allows the users to access the information conveyed by the image. In some cases this can be extensive - audio and video files require transcripts. Graphs and charts require a paragraph explaining what the chart shows. If one were using an image to - say - illustrate the shape of a Danish axe, it would require a paragraph describing the shape.
Now of course Wikipedia isn't held to any standard in the way that UK public sector websites are, so it can set its own standards. I think what's happening here isn't primarily a matter of clarity. It's that the two editors concerned are trying to write text that explains two different standards. -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 14:55, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
The WCAG 2.0 guidelines on images are here.-- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 21:35, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
a text alternative serves the same purpose and presents the same information as the original non-text content. As a result, it is possible to remove the non-text content and replace it with the text alternative and no functionality or information would be lost. This text alternative should not necessarily describe the non-text content. It should serve the same purpose and convey the same information. This may sometimes result in a text alternative that looks like a description of the non-text content. But this would only be true if that was the best way to serve the same purpose.
If possible, the short text alternative should completely convey the purpose and information. If it is not possible to do this in a short phrase or sentence, then the short text alternative should provide a brief overview of the information. A long text alternative would be used in addition to convey the full information.
The text alternative should be able to substitute for the non-text content. If the non-text content were removed from the page and substituted with the text, the page would still provide the same function and information. The text alternative would be brief but as informative as possible.
In deciding what text to include in the alternative, it is a often a good idea to consider the following questions:
When non-text content contains words that are important to understanding the content, the alt text should include those words. If the text in the image is more than can fit in a short text alternative then it should be described in the short text alternative and a long text alternative should be provided as well with the complete text.'' Elen of the Roads ( talk) 21:39, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
alt=
component, always add a caption, if neither of those convey enough information for someone who cannot see the image (eg with a map or chart), refer to the section of text that explains what is in the image--
Elen of the Roads (
talk)
15:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
When I see a polite well-worded post dismissed like this, and try to read through this mess, I have to say that somehow something has gone amiss here, and one of Wiki's truly finest editors is being mistreated, misunderstood, disrespected, ignored ... or something. I have known and worked with Colin since my earliest days on Wiki, and I consider him hands down one of Wiki's top ten editors-- in terms of knowledge, collaborative spirit, temperament, dedication, experience (not only as an FA writer, reviewer, and developer of policy and guidelines pages, but also as a content contributor), and every other good quality that benefits Wiki. I don't have time to keep up here, but I'm going to watchlist this page now and at least give it a try. Wiki will be ill served by alienating one of Wiki's finest, politest, and most collaborative and experienced editors in a protracted dispute that seems to be verging into rudeness. This page needs more experienced eyes to get a handle on this dispute. I encourage participants here to work collaboratively, as I can think of few editors who are as excellent at doing just that as Colin is; do not waste the opportunity to work with one of Wiki's finest. Please. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 11:46, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
It is clear that never was any point in me wasting my time here. But, in vain I leave you with one request and a few comments (the following text refers to this version). Perhaps some of the editors here will agree with me on at least some things.
alt
text is (after the definition) the most important sentence in this guideline. As I said, it can be reworded to avoid jargon but it is of vital importance.Of secondary importance:
alt
text problem is a tricky one and one that took us a long time to realise and understand. So it will be doubly surprising and confusing to our readers. The MediaWiki implementers have cocked-up big time on this one, which really doesn't help. Please make it clear why this is a problem. The two solutions currently offered deal with different situations. The "refer to caption" solution is probably the worst idea I have seen in a very long while and I hope those present here will reject it with gusto. The "refer to body text" is not really any better.alt
text / alternative text issue is dead in the water. This talk page is now littered with examples of why the current usage is correct and helpful and the previous conflation of those terms was deeply confusing and just plain wrong. Ellen's recent posts have only added to the source-based proof that we are currently using the right words the right way.Colin° Talk 21:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that no one seems to know what the industry regards as standard, so the page has lurched back and forth. Eubulides version (5,538 words) required long and detailed ALT text even when the caption or text made clear what the image was; that this became a requirement at FAC and FAR didn't help, and the lack of consensus led to the page's demotion. After that it was rewritten by Colin here (1,872 words), which is shorter, but it's not entirely clear what it's advising.
Ideally, guidelines should be succinct and well-structured, so that editors can quickly get an overview by glancing through them. From that perspective, both versions of the text fail in my view, because they're wordy, repetitive, confusingly structured, and contain too much jargon. Some jargon is inevitable, but editors with technical knowledge are asked to bear in mind that the page has to be accessible to people with none. It seems to me that this version (1057 words), after I tightened and rearranged Colin's version, is clearer in that regard (though it isn't what I would write if I were starting from scratch).
My only interest in the page is twofold: (a) to have the page clearly written, and (b) to make sure it lays out sensible options, but doesn't compel editors to follow them. Other than that, I have no interest in recommending any particular form of alt text. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 07:40, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
|alt=
(which is valid and better than "refer to body") tool. —
Dispenser
19:40, 1 July 2010 (UTC)It's been some months since I've looked at WP:ALT, but it used to mention something about all articles needing alt text, now there's nothing that I could see. I do GAN reviews occasionally, so knowing whether it is required and at what article class it is required would be helpful. -- Teancum ( talk) 18:29, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
WebAIM
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).G94
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Lazar2007
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).WCAG20
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).
Cite error: There are <ref group=Note>
tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=Note}}
template (see the
help page).
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 |
I've rewritten the lead as a placeholder until we get the issues resolved. This takes into account Jared Smith's advice but without going all the way down that road. I'll also be adding something to this effect to the MoS in place of the current text.
Alternative text ( alt text) is text that replaces an image for text-only users. An example of an image with a caption and separate alt text is
[[File:Tall red vase.jpg|thumb|The vase that was thrown at the president's head is now in the National Museum of American History.|alt=A tall red vase]]
. Alt text is aimed at visually impaired readers who use screen readers, which translate the contents of pages into speech; at readers who use browsers with images turned off for whatever reason; and at indexing bots. [1]Non-decorative images should have an alt attribute in the
|alt=
parameter. Without an alt attribute, screen readers may read out the file name or repeat the caption. Filling in an alt attribute need not involve adding a separate description of the image: where the caption or nearby text is sufficiently descriptive or evocative, the alt attribute can be|alt=see caption
or|alt=see adjacent text
. [2] Where additional alt text is deemed appropriate, it must comply with the content policies and should offer only descriptions that can be verified by any reader without specialist knowledge. Its length will depend on the context, but it should be as succinct as possible so that readers are not burdened by unnecessary words—a good rule of thumb is that seven words is often enough, while more detailed images may require 20 words or more. Images that are purely decorative, such as images in templates, should be given a null or empty alt attribute such as |alt=|link=. [3]
{{
cite book}}
: External link in |chapterurl=
(
help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl=
ignored (|chapter-url=
suggested) (
help)
alt
attribute to describe the function of each visual". W3C Quality Assurance Tips for Webmasters. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
Does anyone know what we need to write for regular (non-decorative) images to produce an empty alt attribute? Jared Smith said alt="", but someone above said that wouldn't work. What does work? SlimVirgin TALK contribs 09:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
For specifying no alt text the HTML syntax is alt=""
or alt=" "
(note the space), since MediaWiki will display the default alt text if it is empty or null we need to use |alt=
(HTML escape code for a space). However this was rejected at the time since one screen reader (Orca) would read the link title attribute (the tooltip) instead. But since the default alt text update, this attribute is omitted entirely (and thereby breaking our linking convention). —
Dispenser
22:30, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Myself and User Tuxedo junction are unsure as to the descriptive alt of the picture in this infobox of this article Hermaphrodite, issue is about sexuality, man, woman? Please comment, thanks. Off2riorob ( talk) 19:37, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm wondering if our "see caption" kludge for cases where MediaWiki prevents us saying nothing, is really a wise choice of words. For starters, the words will prefix the caption in the spoken stream of words. Secondly, perhaps "see" isn't the best choice. Thirdly, once this MediaWiki limitation is ever fixed, we're going to want a standard piece of text to search and destroy. I'll chuck "thumb" into the pot as a random suggestion for this situation. Colin° Talk 22:54, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
I have gotten into an edit war as to whether an alt text should include the words "a neat goatee". To me, that violates NPOV. I need ideas. Woogee ( talk) 21:00, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Some of my articles have now been edited with alt text. In general, I think it is a good idea to have alt text messages for those who cannot see the images but I have difficulty in reading them myself because they disappear after a few seconds. Can anyone tell me whether there is a simple way of keeping the alt text message open long enough for it to be read in full? At the moment, the only way I can read the messages properly is to go into edit mode. -- Ipigott ( talk) 11:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Please note that this page has been nominated to be
consolidated with the primary
Manual of Style page. Please join the discussion at the MOS talk page in order to discus the possibility of merging this page with the MOS. Thank you.
—
V = IR (
Talk •
Contribs)
14:39, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
First let me say that I commend the good intentions behind all of this.
Though I've been aware for some time that FAs have alternative text, it's only today that I've first read the project page. It amazes me. Here's its very first example:
I'm not blind and I have not made any serious study of web usability for the blind (or anybody else). So I may be very wrong when I speculate that neither half of this -- neither what's before the pipe nor what's after it -- would be of any interest to a blind person hearing this page. Indeed, if this were my page and I were writing the XHTML directly rather than going through the Mediawiki preprocessor, I might do away with the regular caption and instead have the tag read
thereby clearing the whole thing, caption and all, out of the way of any blind hearer.
I realize both that I haven't thought about the partially sighted and that I could be very, very wrong in my speculation about the blind.
(NB I am not expressing my disapproval of alternative text in general. The project page also has examples that I imagine would be very helpful.) -- Hoary ( talk) 15:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
There is an enormous amount of work to be done in making worthwhile graphics worthwhile for all. As an example, try this section of "Education in Finland". (If you're sighted, that is. If you're blind, please don't bother -- for now, at least.) -- Hoary ( talk) 00:24, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Some alt text describes that such and such is to the left, and such and such in the upper right, while such and such is further to the left, etc. Some of this is quite complicated to follow. I am wondering if such wording should be discouraged. Thoughts? Tuxedo junction ( talk) 21:22, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
We currently have a problem that the content of this page disagrees with the message given to anyone on the talk page. We need to settle this description=wrong issue as it permeates the page. There's little point maintaining the current text if every reply posted here is totally at odds with it.
Are there cases where a short description is required? For example, the design of a flag that is red with a star in the top left. If we decide that is not something we describe in alt text (but instead merely say "Flag of XXX") should we insist that the information conveyed by the image is instead contained in the body text. If so, does that belong here or some other accessibility guideline? Should we burden our sighted readers with information on a person's appearance in a bibliographic article, when that appearance (they are white, they have brown hair, they wear glasses and have a beard) is quite obvious from the photo?
We could do with some FAQ guidance on colour (nothing intrinsically wrong with it) or spacial references like left and right (again, nothing wrong with those). While I agree with Malleus that these might be "signs" that the wrong approach is taken, our guidance should take care not to blame the wrong thing. There's an ignorance that blind people have no concept of colour (or of the meanings society gives to colour) or of up, down, left and right. Colin° Talk 22:44, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
We also have to leave something down to editorial judgment. For the same reason I'd be very opposed to mandating that images must be described somewhere in the text. SlimVirgin talk contribs 17:58, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
We have three audiences for alt text. The visually impaired, those with images turned off and indexing bots. The first of these is our primary concern IMO and there is pressure to meet their needs both from regulatory agencies (government guidelines, W3C guidelines) and morally. The second is an editorial/community judement of no more concern than whether to write a Pokemon article, take and upload a picture, or support a client O/S or browser. Editor consensus to serve that audience better might appear and be enshrined in a guideline recommendation, but I don't see any groundswell yet. If editors choose to aid the second reader, we should offer guidance on how best to do so, but not yet request (to any degree) that they do. The latter (bots) is of zero concern to editors on Wikipedia IMO. If Google Image Search can't work out what our image is based on either the caption, the article title, or the image's own page here or at Commons, then Google need to improve their algorithms, not request we write for them. If they find our alt text useful then that's a bonus but we certainly shouldn't request our editors write text aimed at bots. I suggest this guideline be weighted according to the above, giving most space to the needs of visually impaired readers and a short amount of space to the issue of some readers having images turned off. Colin° Talk 07:38, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed during the last couple of days that the alt text no longer appears when the mouse hovers over an image. This is occurring both in IE 8.x and Firefox 3.6.x. The alt text in infoboxes still works, but not on images within articles. Just curious and am unsure where else to look for why this suddenly is happening. • Astynax talk 18:42, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
It is clear that the current guideline text no longer has consensus support; it isn't an official guideline any more. The guideline is far too long, with too many lengthy examples, and spends too long on rare situations. The examples don't need the mini-essay "flawed alt text". In addition, there are contentious aspects of writing good alt text that (a) haven't been fully resolved and (b) may ultimately reflect editor preference or the preferences of one reader.
I think we should split the guideline in two. Have a short core guideline that covers the essentials both conceptually and in practice, with relatively few examples. The intention is that this would later be re-adopted into the MOS. The second page should contain more examples with longer rationale and also cover the unusual image types that appear on few articles. That page would have no official status as a WP Guideline and its talk page could become a place where editors ask for and offer advice.
Would anyone mind if I took an axe to this page and worked on it directly. Or would it be better to work on a draft version first? Any thoughts on a name for the second example/how-to page?
Colin° Talk 19:22, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
I've made a start on an overhauled version of this guideline
in my sandbox here. It has no equivalent of the "other examples" section but I think it is the better for it. A long guideline is off-putting. I think an extensive set of examples and solved-problems should go on another page, separate from the guideline which should focus on principles and core practicalities. The biggest difference from the current guideline, is the change of focus from the alt
text attribute to the principle of providing a text alternative. When that text alternative is satisfied by the caption, then the alt
text attribute becomes superfluous. As far as drawing advice from the many sources we found, I didn't get much beyond the W3C pages. So there's more advice we could include. I cover the problem with blank alt text not doing what we'd hope it would do, and provide a new solution I think is an improvement. It is a very rough draft so please don't slag off the prose. I've had to fix the related guideline
Wikipedia:Extended image syntax#Alt text and caption because what it said differed substantially from reality. See my
User:Colin/Alt sandbox page for where I experimented with different syntax.
Is this closer to something we can agree on? The lead paragraph is probably a little too purist and you should read the advice later before shooting it down. For example, "provides the same information as an image" needs to be qualified that we are talking about just the information the image provides that is essential for this article; images contain lots of information that we don't need. Thoughts? Feel free to edit it and use the talk page. Colin° Talk 21:50, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
I found "strange" alt text on Derek Jeter and was told the proper format for alt captions is to not use proper names. This seems absurd. Your example is this: Headshot of a young man with wavy hair, a high forehead, and deep-set eyes. That seems horrible. Why not, "Van Gogh, displayed as a young man with wavy hair..."
Just putting the text "a man" is pointless. Which man? Why is that man important? Why is that man on the article?? If you actually name the person in the picture, with a description, this is far more sensible than the current method. I can't imagine that people who actually use the "alt" captions find the current method acceptable. — Timneu22 · talk 18:17, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
The guideline for alt-text on Wikipedia was recently demoted after consensus no longer supported the approach taken. Expert opinion suggested we should rethink. I have prepared a draft revision in a sandbox here that I believe is a better starting-point for us to begin afresh with a new approach to alt-text. It also corrects a number of technical errors. I propose the current text be replaced by this draft revision. Colin° Talk 13:38, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure about this: Alt text that contains just a nonsense filler such as "*" or "-" is annoying, and wordy text such as "refer to adjacent text" becomes tedious. The least-bad solution to this is to supply a word that is at least minimally useful to the reader. A suggestion is therefore to supply the single word "photograph", "painting", "sculpture", etc. When combined with a caption, the result "photograph Tony Blair meeting George Bush" or "painting Napoleon Bonaparte" should be acceptable.
For the most part I agree, but it seems tedious to add "photograph", or "painting", etc., throughout every page on WP. Isn't there a way that the text could be omitted altogether, and possibly some automatic text would be used? Is the automatic text even necessary? I guess I'm just thinking that there are hundreds of thousands of photos with self-explanatory captions; is it really necessary to add "alt=photograph"? My two cents. — Timneu22 · talk 17:52, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
alt=|
" (or miss it off in the certain cases that MediaWiki handles properly) and the screen reader would ignore the image, leaving just the caption. I should probably create a MediaWiki bug report to suggest this, but given the glacial speed such bugs are dealt with, it could be years before anyone does anything about it. As I said, I'm trying to find the least-bad solution. Nobody should have to suffer "
slash toothbrush underscore x three underscore two zero zero five zero seven one six underscore zero zero two".
Colin°
Talk
18:27, 9 April 2010 (UTC)alt
text. Removing the caption is usually also not an option as sighted readers won't see the alt text. As for any software change to automatically achieve these effects, well we might as well ask for the no-links skin software change, so that blank alt text can be done just like other websites do.
Colin°
Talk
22:36, 9 April 2010 (UTC)alt
text" attribute. If the former, would you please stop abbreviating it as it is very confusing. Either way, I can't make head nor tail of your comment. Could you give an example or two.
Colin°
Talk
09:10, 10 April 2010 (UTC)The half-a-dozen comments I've received here and on the draft talk page suggest the draft text is an improvement we can work with. So, since this is a wiki, I have moved it out of my sandbox into Wikipedia so we can collaborate on it here. I'm keen to email our experts to ask if they would review version 2.0 to see if it meets their approval, and that is best done if they are viewing the real thing rather than my personal sandbox. Lastly, I want folk to start trying to apply this new approach to see if it works and then to incorporate what we discover back into the guidance.
Not only does the new alt-guidance take a different approach to the old one, but it is also shorter, which I think is important. It does cover gallery, timeline, maths, chemistry, maps, and diagrams, but it doesn't give lengthy examples of these. The Wikipedia help pages for those elements should cover the syntax for specifying the alt text; this page should worry about what to write. Colin° Talk 21:03, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Extended content
| ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Timneu22 ( talk · contribs) hid the Nutshell in this edit, saying "sorry, that nutshell was entirely confusing. I'm not sure what's trying to be said. please fix and uncomment". I've undone the HTML hiding as it means nobody can see the text to comment on it. What do other people think about the nutshell? The WCAG guideline is "Provide text alternatives for any non-text content". It later qualifies this "text alternative" as needing to "serve the same purpose and present the same information". The nutshell is currently
Which adapts this for our purposes (images) and restricts the "same information" to a more reasonable demand (context-relevant). The problem with just "same information" is, as other commentators have said about the WCAG guideline, that a picture is worth a thousand words: it contains more information than the context requires. Perhaps there's another way of saying "context-relevant"? Colin° Talk 07:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
|
After some discussion above, it seems that there should be a help page on the alt text topic. Before getting started, I've looked around to see where current information is located. Here's what we have.
Proposal:
That being said, I'm not sure if there is enough text to add to a Help page. As an example, WP:CAPTION has no corresponding help page. — Timneu22 · talk 17:29, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
There was a section 'External review', which was most important in the change of the status of the guideline. This section I cannot find on this page or any of the archives. I suggest it's recovered somehow. Regards, SunCreator ( talk) 20:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that the the "alt text and caption" section of the image syntax page says that the caption will be used if no alt text exists. Doesn't that mean that, currently, every image with a caption (and no alt text) will have the caption repeated by screen readers? If so, isn't this a huge problem? Do we need a bot? (And if it's not a huge problem, isn't the section on this page about "blank alt" problem contradictory?) — Timneu22 · talk 17:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
The problem with the Extended image syntax page is that for legacy reasons, it refers to the "anything not already recognised" parameter as the Caption (it is bold-italic for a reason -- it is just a parameter name, and not a very good one). The wiki syntax should have had separate alt, title and caption attributes and that syntax page wouldn't be half as confusing as it is. See User:Colin/Alt for a test page with all the permutations. There are no situations where the alt text is repeated as the visible caption text, so the text never gets repeated by screen readers. Within the combinations, there are cases where MediaWiki spits out the filename as alt text (yuk) and cases where it is blank yet is also a link so the screen reader spits out the file name (yuk). Colin° Talk 18:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
link=
). Efforts were made to spread the use of the link=
parameter for decorative icons. The some developer made a change, and suddenly it wasn't working anymore. Now we have to use both link=
and alt=
. For example: [[Image:Imbox notice.png|28x28px|alt=|link=]]
. That's why we need to have an accessibility expert working with the developers. Does someone knows how to contact the Wikimedia Foundation and how to convince them to employ an accessibility expert?Responding to the
Village pump request, I've created a script which will move image attribution links into the footer. To install this script add {{subst:JS|User:Dispenser/imageunlink.js}}
to your
skin's script page. I have only tested in Firefox 3.6 with the Monobook, Vector, and Modern skins. —
Dispenser
19:53, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Not all screen reader users are totally blind. Some have partial sight, and either use screen readers in addition to screen magnifiers, or only use screen readers because reading text is too slow for them. I also know of a fully sighted computer user who uses screen readers because he has severe dyslexia. Screen reader users can interrupt their speech synthesizers at any time; personally, when I know that a filename is coming up, I just press down arrow to interrupt the text and move to the next line.
I originally wrote the above text at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Javascript_help_needed_with_experiment_on_image_links_and_alt_text. However it was suggested that I copy it here, so that's what I've done. I thought it would be a good idea to note how people use screen readers. Graham 87 14:01, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
I would like to talk about accessibility at Wikimania 2010, and convince the Foundation and the developers to care about accessibility. That is a necessary step. I'd like to give a conference about accessibility there, inspired from the conference about Wikipedia two french accessibility experts held 7 months ago. Is someone willing to come with me ? User:Sj is interested in accessibility and will come to Wikimania 2010. Dodoïste ( talk) 14:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Some potential solutions to the "blank alt text problem" could involve editions (skins) of WP that work better with assistive technology. Dodoïste seems dogmatically opposed to such an idea, which I think is a mistake. The guideline cited above discourages "text-only versions" on the grounds that they tend not to be kept up-to-date and that proper application of other guidelines make them unnecessary. The former doesn't apply to WP: the HTML we see is generated from Wiki markup which is ignorant of the final appearance. The latter is a matter of opinion that ultimately can only be tested through experiment. Currently, WP's HTML is suboptimal for users of screen readers.
The typical web user is changing. People are increasingly surfing on Netbooks, PDAs, mobile phones and even their television. Some may use Wikipedia through a different client than a web browser. Editions of WP for these different technologies are being developed; assistive technology variants could benefit from variants too.
WP also has two kinds of user: reader and editor. The former greatly outnumber the latter yet the UI is designed round the latter. Many people read Wikipedia via mirror or other reference sites, which provide their own HTML variants and don't allow editing.
This is somewhat off-topic for this guideline, but I just want to encourage any technology-change discussion to be open-minded about the solutions. If we do "convince the Foundation and the developers to care about accessibility" we should allow them freedom to develop a solution in consultation with experts, rather than impose a solution or restrict the options. Colin° Talk 17:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
I have tried restarting my IE 8.0, I also rebooted my computer, I even switched over to Firefox, and I still cannot see the alt text when I mouseover an image that contains the alt command. The mouseover works when I hover the mouse over a link, but not when I try to view the accessibility alt codes for images. What am I doing wrong? Is the alt code mouseover function blacked out? Is this adversely affecting blind users of Wikipedia?
— Paine (
Ellsworth's
Climax)
07:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
And now I'm seeing the tooltip again when I mouseover. Go figure.
— Paine (
Ellsworth's
Climax)
03:27, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
This guidance is badly written and self-contradicting. It extols us "where [an image] has been chosen to illustrate what [a person] looked like—the alternative text should describe his appearance" and at the same time says "[an image showing the appearance of Elizabeth II] should not be described as "an elderly lady wearing a yellow dress". So, now I am unclear as to whether the alt text [1] I removed from Elizabeth II, which is solely used to describe her appearance, should have been left in after all. Guidelines this long and confusing are unlikely to be followed. DrKiernan ( talk) 18:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Template:Infobox NBA Player needs to be made WP:ALT compliant.-- TonyTheTiger ( T/ C/ BIO/ WP:CHICAGO/ WP:FOUR) 23:45, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
The guidelines seem to have changed dramatically since I last looked yet I can find do record of any discussion to this end. Can someone please tell me what's going on? As far as I was aware the purpose of alt text was to aid blind and partially sighted readers by providing them with a description of images in articles. I really don't see the point of using alt-text to effectively just duplciate a caption. Cavie78 ( talk) 22:09, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
There are problems with the edits made 3rd June. Sorry this is so long, but I've mostly reverted them so feel I have to justify why.
Firstly, they heavily promote the "Refer to caption" or "Refer to adjacent text" alt-text suggestion, which is actually one of the options the guideline was changed to discourage. The lead text now suggests this along with a reference to two sources. However, neither of those sources make that suggestion, and I haven't seen any alt text guideline suggesting that approach. I ask that we consider whether a screen-reader user wants to hear those deeply unhelpful words several times every time she reads a Wikipedia article. The caption is spoken next anyway and the reader is reading the adjacent text anyway. If we don't need to write alt-text then we should ensure we write as next-to-nothing as possible, and what we do write shouldn't be annoying.
Secondly, many of the edits indicate a misunderstanding of the what this guideline is about, and what all "alternative text" guidelines are about. The W3C and Wikipedia guidelines are about providing alternative text for images. They are not about writing alt
text attributes in HTML or Wiki markup, though that is one solution. This "alternative text" may be in the alt
text attribute, or the caption or the body text.
Thirdly, the edits fail to maintain the natural progression of the guideline and the purposes of each section. Instead, suggestions for alt-text wording are scattered throughout. The guideline was written with a planned order. We explain the who and why of alternative text. We explain some of the syntax involved and the other elements such as captions and link titles. We give some general advice. Once the reader has a grounding in the issues and technicalities, we then give detailed advice on the alt
text attribute. Lastly we discuss the problem of blank alt text. Then, as an appendix, we give a number of examples.
alt
attribute is even explained to the reader (third paragraph of the lead). Let's keep the lead paragraph dealing with the what and why of alternative text, without getting bogged down in one technical approach, and one that isn't particularly good. The two sources given here are already in the references.alt
attribute is and some tooltip details to the start of the Audience section. Why? This is nothing to do with audience the audience section deals with "alternative text", not just "alt
text". It also shortened the section header "Caption, alt, link and title" to "Caption" but the content still referred to links and titles. How about "Image syntax elements" as a section heading.alt
attribute when composing alternative text." That sentence seems to be good advice in a section on Context. Why remove it?Please can we discuss "blank alt text" solutions such as "refer to caption" before re-introducing them. If there are issues with the order that information is presented, let's discuss how to improve that. But there is a plan to the current order and littering the guideline with suggestions out-of-order will make it a confusing mess. Colin° Talk 09:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Colin, you reverted all the changes I made on June 3, including the simple copy-editing that I felt tightened it and made the structure flow a little better. [5] I haven't restored those changes, but I did restore "refer to caption" or "refer to adjacent text" as options, but only as options. [6] I hope that's a sufficient compromise.
I'm willing to look around for examples, but I'm not entirely clear what kinds of examples you'd like. SlimVirgin talk contribs 01:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Here is an example I've referred to before from Death of Ian Tomlinson, about a British man who died during a G-20 protest after being pushed to the ground by a police officer.
I'm offering this as an example of when alt=refer to caption would be appropriate. The actual alt text I added to this image was a tediously long description of it—this was before the guideline changed:
A small crowd scene. On the right, four people dressed in uniform, their heads and face mostly not visible, wearing yellow and blue jackets, black trousers and black shoes. They are carrying long thin sticks, and round transparent shields. On the left, there are three men. One is on the ground, sitting with his legs straight out, and his arms raised, looking at the people dressed in uniform. He is wearing a grey and blue top and black trousers with a white stripe. Two men are leaning over him; one is holding his arms. The latter is wearing a dark hooded top, grey trousers with white stripes, and has a grey and blue bag over his shoulders.
SlimVirgin talk contribs 09:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Normal viewing | Screen reader | Rationale | |
---|---|---|---|
[[File:Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police.jpg|200px|thumb|left|alt=refer to caption|Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police after being pushed to the ground, minutes before he died.]]
| |||
![]() |
link graphic refer to caption. Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police after being pushed to the ground, minutes before he died. | Article:
Ian Tomlinson The purpose of the image is to show a scene from the events where Ian Tomlinson was interacting with the police prior to his death. The caption describes the image and also contains additional information ("minutes before he died") that is not present in the image. | |
[[File:Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police.jpg|200px|thumb|left|alt=Photograph|Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police after being pushed to the ground, minutes before he died.]]
| |||
![]() |
link graphic Photograph. Ian Tomlinson remonstrates with police after being pushed to the ground, minutes before he died. | Article:
Ian Tomlinson The purpose of the image is to show a scene from the events where Ian Tomlinson was interacting with the police prior to his death. The caption describes the image and also contains additional information ("minutes before he died") that is not present in the image. |
How is the "refer to caption" option an improvement on the "photograph" option? It advises the reader to do something he's about to do anyway (read/hear the caption). It implies the reader has come to the wrong place for information and needs to be referred elsewhere. It is tediously wordy and will just be annoying in an FA with a dozen similar photographs. I dread to think how tedious a FL with thirty photographs might be. Colin° Talk 10:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
(responding to comment above) Actually, the article was quite clear on the difference between "alternative text" and "alt
text" until
this edit which conflated the two in the lead sentence. The word "alt
" when referring to the attribute, was always formatted in code style (at least that was the plan, perhaps some escaped formatting). The guideline used that word exclusively for a wikimarkup attribute, as do our best sources. Yes this page needs to be clear on the meaning of terms. Perhaps before you make the guideline any more confusing, we might agree on them on the talk page, and you might consider reverting that particular terminology mistake. I'm not "throwing around" terms. I'm using the official W3C terms. What terms are you using?
Colin°
Talk
10:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Further review of the above edit (with summary "rewrote first few lines and nutshell to reflect source"). The existing text actually matched the source (the W3C definition of "alternative text") and the edit replaced it with the WebAIM source and text based on that source, using their terminology. I resent the implication that the existing text didn't reflect the source.
IMO the WebAIM terminology ("content and function") is weaker than the W3C terminology ("same information" / "equivalent purpose"). If you are interested in why, I'll explain, but I suspect I'm wasting my breath here.
The lead now completely confuses the distinction between "alt
text" the attribute value and "alternative text" the concept. I'm seeing carefully chosen words and correctly used terms being ripped up and replaced by a confused mess. The article used to have a flow where each section had a purpose and introduced concepts before using them, described problems before offering solutions. My attempts to explain what was wrong with certain edits just gets ignored; they are reinserted without discussion.
Is there any point in me watching or contributing to this page? Colin° Talk 12:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Let's go through it bit by bit, starting with the first paragraph. Can you say exactly what is wrong with it? It seems very clear to me, and it's sourced to WebAim.
Alternative text (alt text) is a textual alternative to images. The point of alt text is to allow the content and function of an image to be understood by text-only readers. It is displayed by browers when images are not displayed, is read out loud by screen readers for those with visual impairment, and is used by search engines to determine the content of an image.
And if your objection is that alternative text and alt text are not the same thing, please link to a source that says that, so I can read it for myself. SlimVirgin talk contribs 15:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
alt
attribute term, to distinguish it from the alternative text concept.alt
attribute for the short text alternative, as one means of doing so. The W3C requirements pages aren't particularly easy to navigate. However, I believe they have been very careful and precise with their words. I believe the above title: "that serves the same purpose and presents the same information as the non-text content" is the best definition of alternative text you will find on the web. It is better than WebAIM's definition. But I'll deal with that later.alt
should be reserved for markup attributes and presented in a code font like WebAIM do?
Colin°
Talk
18:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)alt
attribute is a subset of the text that constitutes "alternative text". Therefore the WebAim quote you give makes sense. The alt
attribute text is part of the alternative text for the image and must obey the requirements for a text alternative. However, the alternative text is not equal to the alt
attribute text. The caption on the other hand, might satisfy the need for a text alternative but isn't so constrained by the rules.alt
". When you write your FAs, you don't use abbreviations; it isn't a professional thing to do. Similarly, when careful sources talk about providing a text alternative for an image, they don't use the abbreviation alt. Both WebAIM and W3C only use the word alt
when referring to the HTML attribute.I've tweaked the writing in a way that I hope addresses your concern:
Alternative text (alt text) is a textual alternative to images. The point of alt text is to allow the content and function of an image to be understood by text-only readers. When alt text is added after an image, such as
|alt=A painting of Napoleon Bonaparte
, that text is displayed by browers when images are not displayed, is read out loud by screen readers for those with visual impairment, and is used by search engines to determine the content of the image. [1]
SlimVirgin talk| contribs 05:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Comments
Colin has asked me to comment on this discussion. It is sad to see two of Wikipedia's finest contributors at loggerheads, but having spent most of yesterday and this morning trying to get heart of the matter I think I can understand why. This is the situation as I see it: Editors will come to this page because they need help with an article they are editing. They will want to find quickly solutions to problems with alternative text for images and then return to their work on "their" article. Other editors, those reviewing FACs for example, will need fuller guidance that includes explanations of the limitations of the alt attribute in wiki mark-up. Wiki software developers may read it with a view to improving accessibility.
I think the version Colin last edited while well-structured, comprehensive and accurately sourced was not helpful to editors looking for a quick solution and is difficult to understand in parts on first reading, particularly those lacking expertise, such as Colin's, in mark-up functionality. This is not helped by the attribute's being called "alt", which I think still is a source of confusion for readers. And I think SV's motivation to offer clear practical advice to readers seeking a quick solution is admirable.
I installed Fangs yesterday and read a few articles to gain a deeper understanding of the experience of those of us who use screen readers. I have to agree with Colin in that expression such as "refer to" or even worse "see" would be tedious in the extreme and could give the impression of laziness. (But, to try to get this into perspective, the most tedious of all was the references, which are read out for example as "This page link left bracket eighty-two right bracket"!)
I agree with SV in that you should "combine your strengths" but would add that you should acknowledge your weaknesses. The current article is not an improvement on the version last edited by Colin and errors have been introduced with regard to the function of the alt attribute and the expression "alternative text", which are different things. On the other hand, the earlier version is confusing to those seeking practical help. I think it has to be made clear:
Please don't fall out with me for saying but I think the emphasis should be on practical help and clear explanation, rather than a well-sourced article. Your strengths are expertise and clear writing. Your weaknesses are impatience, and an outsider reading the above might perceive a little arrogance too. Graham. Graham Colm ( talk) 13:25, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm just catching up and it will take me a while. I'm greatly indebted to GrahamColm for helping and for the considerable time he has spent getting up to speed with the issue. I agree with SV there are only two concepts. My point is that our best sources are careful never to use the word "alt" wrt the first (alternative text) and furthermore some use a code font for "alt
" when referring to the attribute to further emphasise this is an HTML markup keyword, not an abbreviation of an English word. WebAIM use the term "alt attribute" for the HTML attribute and any text it contains (hence a missing alt attribute (no 'alt="..."') is different from empty alt text (i.e., 'alt=""') and they use "alt text" to mean the text supplied for the alt attribute. They use the full "alternative text" for the overall text requirement which may be met by a caption, say. W3C are similar, though they tend to say "text alternative" and only a very minor part of their work even mentions the "alt" HTML attribute. It is clear that writing "alt text" is ambiguous here on WP as various contributors to this page have used it as shorthand to mean the "alternative text" concept and others to mean the HTML (or Wiki) attribute text. Repeatedly asking for a source that explicitly says a ≠ b is as pointless to me as someone asking for a source that says London ≠ England. You won't find one but you can tell from the usage by careful writers that they are different things and you can tell from their own individual definitions that they are different things.
Can we please agree that some people find the use of "alt text" as an abbreviation for "alternative text" to be confusing and contrary to the usage in our best sources. There is no need, in professional writing, to abbreviate. Please can we be strict in only using "alternative text" for the guideline/concept. And agree that for the text within the "" of the Wiki image markup's alt
attribute, we can use "alt
attribute text".
Colin°
Talk
08:19, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
The other issue we're trying to decide is what to write when (as you put it) the alt attribute is not "used." We could say "photograph," or "illustration," or where appropriate "refer to caption." What is your suggestion? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 13:42, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I've removed it from the lead, and added to the caption section:
Where the caption is sufficiently descriptive or evocative of the image, or where it makes clear what the function of the image is, one option is to write
|alt=photograph
,|alt=drawing
, or|alt=refer to caption
. Where nearby text in the article performs the same function, it can be|alt=refer to adjacent text
. [2] Editors should use common sense and keep the alt text as tight as possible when the caption suffices, to prevent screen readers reading out unnecessary words.
Is that a compromise we can agree on?
SlimVirgin talk| contribs 18:41, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Placing the versions of the lead side by side for clarification:
Previous | Current |
---|---|
Alternative text is text that serves an equivalent purpose and provides the same essential information as an image in an article, and is intended for text-only users. It should preferably be short, and co-located with the image. If this is not practical, for example because the image presents a lot of information, then a very brief description of the image or overview of the information should be given and a longer text alternative offered elsewhere.
[3]
[1] Absent or unhelpful alternative text is a source of frustration for blind users of the Web.
[4]
An image that is purely decorative (provides no information and serves only an aesthetic purpose) requires no alternative text. Ideally, such images would be ignored by screen readers and text-only browsers [5] but in practice this is not generally possible on Wikipedia. A short text alternative is typically implemented on Wikipedia through a combination of the image
caption and the image
|
![]() With the alt parameter empty, the screenreader would read out the file name: "link graphic slash Jacques hyphen Louis underscore David underscore zero one seven jay pee gee." Alternative text (alt text) is a textual alternative to images. The point of alt text is to allow the content and function of an image to be understood by text-only readers. Alt text can be specified in images with the "
The words after " Alt text should be brief. Where an image presents a lot of information, a short description in the alt parameter can accompany a longer description in the caption or body of the article, where necessary. [3] The alt parameter should not be left empty, because almost all images are also links, and if the parameter is empty screen readers will read out the link filename, such as (for the Napoleon example) "link graphic slash Jacques hyphen Louis underscore David underscore zero one seven jay pee gee."
[6] An image that is purely decorative—for example in a template where the image is not a link—requires no alt text. Where the caption or nearby text are sufficiently descriptive or evocative, or where they make clear what the function of the image is, one option for the alt parameter is to write
|
I think I've more or less finished the copy edit and tightening. It's down from 1875 words to 1059 (the readable prose size doesn't count text in tables or blockquotes). There are a few things I'd like to tighten still, but I'm just about finished for now. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 09:07, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
We give as an example of the audience for alt text "readers who have difficulty understanding visual images." This is a separate category from readers with visual impairment. The source is given as this, but I can't find a reference to it there. What do we mean by "readers who have difficulty understanding visual images"? SlimVirgin talk| contribs 18:33, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
It is worth watchlisting this page just to see what the Queen is wearing each day. :-) Seriously, though... I wanted a simple picture of someone recognisable yet also not blatantly (it could be just an elderly lady in a yellow dress) -- yesterday's picture was too distractingly a queen with a crown. In today's picture, the crowd form a distracting aspect that one might want to include in the alternative text. The yellow dress picture was, I thought, perfect for the task. Locating the image on the left is often not ideal as it breaks up the layout of the text. I wonder if the fact she is not facing into the text, when positioned on the right, could be overlooked. After all, this is a guideline on alternative text, not image composition and layout. Colin° Talk 08:45, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm very glad to see the Dannebrog example back as an example with the original alt
attribute text and rationale. This was one of the most discussed pictures on the talk page and is also a good example of basic alternative text rather than one of the "what to do in this situation" examples. The rationale highlights the "essential information" that the alternative text needs to get across.
Which brings us to one reason why I think the W3C's "serves an equivalent purpose and provides the same essential information" definition of alternative text is considerably better than WebAIM's "content and function". The "content" word all too easily lead the reader into thinking he has to describe the picture ("a flag fluttering on a flag pole..."). Not all content is information and even less is essential to the article. I think "purpose" is better than "function". The words can be interchangeable to some degree but the former implies an active choice by the editor rather than a passive ability/feature of the graphic. It is that difference that is absolutely key to helping the editor write good alternative text. Their thoughts should not be: This is an image that happens to be in the article that I happen to have to write alternative text for. It should be: This is an image that I (or someone else) chose to serve a purpose and provide information, and for which I should ensure is still possible even if the image is not available to the reader.
The rationales were written to show what the editor had actively considered when selecting the picture: "The purpose of the image is...", "a stock photograph chosen to decorate a sound bite ...", "The picture is used to show ...". Considering the "purpose" and then the "information" are two of the four questions that the W3C ask editors to consider for alternative text. We should ensure our example rationales make that thought process explicit. Currently, the Water Fluoridation rationale has been weakened by unnecessary trimming. Colin° Talk 08:45, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Colin, could you discuss your edits here, please, rather than restoring some of the problematic material? I've tried to keep the terms we use as simple as possible, because it's aimed at readers with and without technical knowledge, but your version restored terms that introduce confusion in my view. For example, you use alternative text, alt parameter text, alt text, alt parameter, and alt attribute in ways that are not clear. First of all, please provide a source that shows alt text is not used to mean the same thing as alternative text. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 20:53, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
alt
parameter text, alt
text, alt
parameter, and alt
attribute" need to be used because they are different things (though the second is just a longer way of saying the third). The WebAIM source makes it clear they reserve the term "alternative text" for the text alternative regardless of where it appears and distinguish their use of the abbreviation "alt" for the HTML markup attribute. The "alt=...
" bit is called the "alt
parameter" in Wiki markup and is called the "alt
attribute" in HTML. The words "attribute" and "parameter" are generally synonymous in computer science but it is best to use the terminology used by others than to conflate them here. The web world (and WebAIM) are happy to use the term "alt
text" for the text between the quotes in the alt
attribute (the Wikimarkup doesn't require quotes). They are not happy to use the term "alt text" to mean alternative text regardless of where it appears. These things are all facts. They are verifiable from the sources given. Any attempt to combine them and just use the term "alt text" for all of them just confuses. It is an oversimplification. There is a difference, for example, between not having an alt
parameter at all and having blank alt
text (i.e., "alt=|
"). There is a difference between having no alternative text and having no alt
text. Technical writing requires precision and an appreciation of using the right words.
Colin°
Talk
09:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)From WebAIM:
Examples of the use of "alt text" for the text for the HTML attribute. Note the use of brown code font for "alt".
alt
text is not appropriate."alt
text might be different."alt
text may be appropriate."alt
text) would not provide the important information that the image presents. "alt
text (alt=""
)."alt
text to provide additional information or to provide additional keywords to search engines."In many other cases they refer to the "alt
attribute", because they are concerned with the "alt=""
" bit, not just the text.
To distinguish that "alternative text" means something else, here's the big warning box on their guideline:
alt
attribute will be used when referring to the attribute itself, which often will, but does not exclusively, contain the alternative text.And they conclude with
alt
attribute or in the surrounding context of the image. "They are saying the text may be provided "in the" attribute, in other words, it is between the quotes, or it may appear in a caption.
Colin° Talk 16:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Last night's revert by SlimVirgin removed two changes. One was an attempt to clarify the alt/alternative terms issue and is being discussed above. The second was a significantly improved lead. The baby has been rather thrown out with the bathwater here and I implore SlimVirgin to allow me to reinstall those improvements, minus the contentious issue of alt/alternative naming. Here are the reasons why the lead was improved in this edit:
alt
parameter in the
MediaWiki markup." is the most important sentence in this entire guideline. The lead prior to the edit last night (which was the result of undiscussed edits) did not make this point.Colin° Talk 07:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
SlimVirgin | Colin |
---|---|
Alternative text (alt text) is a textual alternative to images. The point of alt text is to allow the content and function of an image to be understood by text-only readers. Alt text can be specified in images with the "alt= " parameter:
The words after " The alt parameter should not be left empty, because almost all images are links, and if the parameter is empty screen readers will read out the link filename, such as (for the Napoleon example) "link graphic slash Jacques hyphen Louis underscore David underscore zero one seven jay pee gee."
[7] An image that is purely decorative—for example in a template where the image is not a link—requires no alt text. Where the caption or nearby text are sufficiently descriptive or evocative, or where they make clear what the function of the image is, one option for the alt parameter is to write |
Alternative text is text associated with an image that serves the same purpose and conveys the same essential information as the image.
[3] In situations where the image is not available to the reader (perhaps because they have turned off images in their web browser, or are using a
screen reader due to a visual impairment) the alternative text ensures no information or functionality is lost.
[3] Absent or unhelpful alternative text is a source of frustration for blind users of the Web.
[4]
On Wikipedia, alternative text is typically supplied through a combination of the image
caption and the text supplied for the image
The For images that link to their image description page (which is nearly all images on Wikipedia), the An image that is purely decorative (provides no information and serves only an aesthetic purpose) requires no alternative text. Often the caption fully meets the requirements for alternative text. However, the only situation where blank |
SlimVirgin talk| contribs 08:05, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
(from SV's talk) I'm giving you notice that if you carry out your threat to revert Graham's edit, continue to make such threats, or perform similar edits or reverts, then I shall report you for edit warring. I already regard your edits made 9th June as edit warring. Your revert of my edit 22nd June was unjustified and not at all in keeping with our guidelines on reverting. You have twice made accusations against me of making edits without discussion. Those accusations are entirely without foundation and I find them deeply offensive. They are all the more galling because that is precisely the characteristic of your edits that is causing all the trouble. Colin° Talk 17:55, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Forgive me interjecting myself, I came here after seeing Colin's request at WP:RFPP. I wanted to jump into the debate because when I read the first the few paragraphs of this version I cringed at the depressingly familiar sight of an editing guideline that should be for everyone but is actually written as if for a small subset of our editors. The language in the version I linked is far too technical and requires then non-tech-savvy reader to follow a bunch of links to understand it. If a techy section is needed, one could be added later on but the first few paragraphs need to be written for a general audience. Here's a list of totally unsuitable vocabulary in the current lead paragraphs:
All those need to go from the lead section. The version in question is also excessively wordy (reads as if written by committee, which it probably effectively has been) and could stand some trimming. It would also be a good idea to juxtapose the image of a Napoleon with a demonstration of what users that do cannot display the image will see and an audio clip of what a screen-reader would produce. CIreland ( talk) 16:34, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
alt=
" somewhere. We can get rid of the others. Here's what I propose:
alt
parameter in the
MediaWiki markup.alt
text" (in a code
font) is used here to refer to the text supplied for the image alt
parameter and which generates text for the
HTML alt attributealt
text" is used here to refer to the text in the image alt
parameteralt
text are both useful ways of supplying alternative text. The wordiness is the least of our problems at present. But if you wish to suggest (in the manner I did above) how to rewrite certain sentences for brevity, then we can all review it and judge it on its merits. What I want to stop now is any edits made without prior discussion and attempts to establish consensus. That's Wikipedia policy for goodness sake. And it is absolutely required where editors are in disagreement. Further reverts will be regarded as edit warring and reported as such.
Colin°
Talk
17:37, 26 June 2010 (UTC)That the changes proposed (16:52, 26 June 2010) by Colin be applied to the lead in an effort to remove unnecessary jargon. I think we can re-word to remove the first two and the fifth use of "alt
parameter". Removing the other two will be harder. I'm running out of time just now. Back later.
Colin°
Talk
17:48, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
FWIW, and despite my remarks below about the standards, this is Wikipedia. I don't think it's necessary to go into as much detail about alt tags etc as you would for web developers. At the same time, I do think the current Wikipedia standard is a bit minimal. The alternative text (wherever placed - it can be in the caption, the alt text or the longtext) for Napoleon, if one were following the AA (replaced by) Priority 1 (A) standard, should be "painting by Carlsberg of Napoleon Bonepart in 1800-frozen to death, at age 106, showing him in the uniform of a French chasseur du cheval and wearing the Blue Star of the Republic. The subject is holding a small dog under his left arm, symbolic of his desire to subdue the nations, and is shown standing in front of a pair of navy blue velvet curtains, which hide a nasty stain on the wall." --
Elen of the Roads (
talk)
20:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
alt=...
" in the correct place, so they need to learn some markup. Perhaps I need to repeat the proposal diffs and to say this is just one step. It is a step that is removing some of the detail about HTML tags and other jargon. I'm not saying that after this proposed change it is perfect.As someone who manages a UK local authority website - which is required to conform to the AA standard (and frequently doesn't! - we are ranked continually [11]), I'd add the following notes.
There is a difference between alt
and the more general notion of alternative text.
this is the W3 guidance on the subject. The alt
tag needs to be used on all images: - icons, buttons, spacers (we lost 50 places in the ranking once when someone put up some pages with a load of white rectangles with no alt tags used as spacers). The standard requires that an image has an alt text and an accompanying text which allows the users to access the information conveyed by the image. In some cases this can be extensive - audio and video files require transcripts. Graphs and charts require a paragraph explaining what the chart shows. If one were using an image to - say - illustrate the shape of a Danish axe, it would require a paragraph describing the shape.
Now of course Wikipedia isn't held to any standard in the way that UK public sector websites are, so it can set its own standards. I think what's happening here isn't primarily a matter of clarity. It's that the two editors concerned are trying to write text that explains two different standards. -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 14:55, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
The WCAG 2.0 guidelines on images are here.-- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 21:35, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
a text alternative serves the same purpose and presents the same information as the original non-text content. As a result, it is possible to remove the non-text content and replace it with the text alternative and no functionality or information would be lost. This text alternative should not necessarily describe the non-text content. It should serve the same purpose and convey the same information. This may sometimes result in a text alternative that looks like a description of the non-text content. But this would only be true if that was the best way to serve the same purpose.
If possible, the short text alternative should completely convey the purpose and information. If it is not possible to do this in a short phrase or sentence, then the short text alternative should provide a brief overview of the information. A long text alternative would be used in addition to convey the full information.
The text alternative should be able to substitute for the non-text content. If the non-text content were removed from the page and substituted with the text, the page would still provide the same function and information. The text alternative would be brief but as informative as possible.
In deciding what text to include in the alternative, it is a often a good idea to consider the following questions:
When non-text content contains words that are important to understanding the content, the alt text should include those words. If the text in the image is more than can fit in a short text alternative then it should be described in the short text alternative and a long text alternative should be provided as well with the complete text.'' Elen of the Roads ( talk) 21:39, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
alt=
component, always add a caption, if neither of those convey enough information for someone who cannot see the image (eg with a map or chart), refer to the section of text that explains what is in the image--
Elen of the Roads (
talk)
15:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
When I see a polite well-worded post dismissed like this, and try to read through this mess, I have to say that somehow something has gone amiss here, and one of Wiki's truly finest editors is being mistreated, misunderstood, disrespected, ignored ... or something. I have known and worked with Colin since my earliest days on Wiki, and I consider him hands down one of Wiki's top ten editors-- in terms of knowledge, collaborative spirit, temperament, dedication, experience (not only as an FA writer, reviewer, and developer of policy and guidelines pages, but also as a content contributor), and every other good quality that benefits Wiki. I don't have time to keep up here, but I'm going to watchlist this page now and at least give it a try. Wiki will be ill served by alienating one of Wiki's finest, politest, and most collaborative and experienced editors in a protracted dispute that seems to be verging into rudeness. This page needs more experienced eyes to get a handle on this dispute. I encourage participants here to work collaboratively, as I can think of few editors who are as excellent at doing just that as Colin is; do not waste the opportunity to work with one of Wiki's finest. Please. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 11:46, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
It is clear that never was any point in me wasting my time here. But, in vain I leave you with one request and a few comments (the following text refers to this version). Perhaps some of the editors here will agree with me on at least some things.
alt
text is (after the definition) the most important sentence in this guideline. As I said, it can be reworded to avoid jargon but it is of vital importance.Of secondary importance:
alt
text problem is a tricky one and one that took us a long time to realise and understand. So it will be doubly surprising and confusing to our readers. The MediaWiki implementers have cocked-up big time on this one, which really doesn't help. Please make it clear why this is a problem. The two solutions currently offered deal with different situations. The "refer to caption" solution is probably the worst idea I have seen in a very long while and I hope those present here will reject it with gusto. The "refer to body text" is not really any better.alt
text / alternative text issue is dead in the water. This talk page is now littered with examples of why the current usage is correct and helpful and the previous conflation of those terms was deeply confusing and just plain wrong. Ellen's recent posts have only added to the source-based proof that we are currently using the right words the right way.Colin° Talk 21:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that no one seems to know what the industry regards as standard, so the page has lurched back and forth. Eubulides version (5,538 words) required long and detailed ALT text even when the caption or text made clear what the image was; that this became a requirement at FAC and FAR didn't help, and the lack of consensus led to the page's demotion. After that it was rewritten by Colin here (1,872 words), which is shorter, but it's not entirely clear what it's advising.
Ideally, guidelines should be succinct and well-structured, so that editors can quickly get an overview by glancing through them. From that perspective, both versions of the text fail in my view, because they're wordy, repetitive, confusingly structured, and contain too much jargon. Some jargon is inevitable, but editors with technical knowledge are asked to bear in mind that the page has to be accessible to people with none. It seems to me that this version (1057 words), after I tightened and rearranged Colin's version, is clearer in that regard (though it isn't what I would write if I were starting from scratch).
My only interest in the page is twofold: (a) to have the page clearly written, and (b) to make sure it lays out sensible options, but doesn't compel editors to follow them. Other than that, I have no interest in recommending any particular form of alt text. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 07:40, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
|alt=
(which is valid and better than "refer to body") tool. —
Dispenser
19:40, 1 July 2010 (UTC)It's been some months since I've looked at WP:ALT, but it used to mention something about all articles needing alt text, now there's nothing that I could see. I do GAN reviews occasionally, so knowing whether it is required and at what article class it is required would be helpful. -- Teancum ( talk) 18:29, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
WebAIM
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).G94
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Lazar2007
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).WCAG20
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).
Cite error: There are <ref group=Note>
tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=Note}}
template (see the
help page).