💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~sloum › geminilist › 002694.gmi captured on 2020-09-24 at 01:01:30. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Nathan Galt mailinglists at ngalt.com
Sun Sep 13 01:21:28 BST 2020
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On Sep 12, 2020, at 1:40 PM, easeout at tilde.team wrote:
On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 06:11:53PM +0200, Katarina Eriksson wrote:
<easeout at tilde.team> wrote:
I think it would also be suitable to change the name from "alt text" to
something like "accessibile description".
Changing the name to something to do with accessibility is something I
agree with.
For what it's worth, when I suggested the name change I thought that
HTML IMG "alt" was the tooltip and "title" was the accessible
description. But in fact that is backwards; alt text is the accessible
description. So at this point I don't think a name change is necessary.
I'm not opposed to renaming, though, if it would avoid repeating the
misunderstanding I had.
=
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1734806/ Background reading and linkage
Most graphical browsers displayed the contents of the `alt` attribute in a tooltip for a decade+, in addition to showing it when images hadn’t loaded (yet). People used to write “alt text” for people who may or may not be able to see the image.
Then Firefox said “No, we’re not doing that. It misleads HTML authors into thinking that the value of the `alt` attribute is for people who can see the image already. If you want tooltips, put your tooltip text into the `title` attribute; Internet Explorer handles that just fine, too.”
Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued, but just about everyone got over it.
I don’t think many people today are liable to get their wires crossed like this. Referring to tooltip text as “alt text” strikes me as a late-90s affectation, and I don’t think new authors are liable to slip into this mistake easily.