Accessibility standards/guidelines expect that decorative images will have alt="". As the Drupal field description texts are currently written, there is no mention of the distinction between decorative and meaningful images. This can easily result in a situation which is burdensome for both content editors and users of screen readers & other assistive technology.
"Short description of the image used by screen readers and displayed when the image is not loaded. Enabling this field is recommended"
"Making this field required is recommended"
and leaves the Alt field enabled and required.
"Short description of the image used by screen readers and displayed when the image is not loaded. This is important for accessibility."
enters "person looking at a computer screen", and publishes. The editor makes 100 more pages like this.
I think we can provide a better experience for screen reader users and editors with one easy fix.
Prepend 3 words: "For meaningful images," to "Short description of the image used by screen readers and displayed when the image is not loaded."
This is an attempt to summarize in a single word the w3c concepts of Informative and Functional,
https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/informative/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/functional/
and exclude the w3c concept Decorative.
https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/decorative/
People who are blind aren't viewing a display, they're using a screen reader, so it would be better to say "read".
People unfamiliar with accessibility would benefit from something more specific.
Reviewing the WCAG 2 terms:
Proposed change: "accessible understanding or use of the image"
"For [meaningful|informative or functional] images, short description of the image used by screen readers and [read] when the image is not loaded. This is important for [accessible understanding or use of the image]."
Discuss wording which works yet avoids TLDNR.
Alt field description text above. Sentences to update include "used by screen readers" and "Making this field required is recommended" in >5 places in the core codebase.
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Clarify alt text use for meaningful images.
Active
11.0 🔥
It affects the ability of people with disabilities or special needs (such as blindness or color-blindness) to use Drupal.
Makes Drupal easier to use. Preferred over UX, D7UX, etc.
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It's likely this issue predates Contrib.social: some issue and comment data are missing.
@alejandraaviles
Thanks for the links!
proposed solution to this well known issue, will be to have added to the helper text that sits bellow the field
To alt text decorative images use two brackets ("")
That info is already in the help text, see #2934405-27: [META] Improve workflows for image alternative text →