[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 5566] ALT attribute value not displayed when image is missing

Tue Nov 16 13:26:37 PST 2010

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5566

--- Comment #40 from Gérard Talbot <browserbugs at gtalbot.org>  2010-11-16 13:26:36 PST ---
(In reply to comment #38)
> >> - there are multiple claims in this bug that it affects blind people

Blind people use JAWS, speech browsers and braille browsers: if web authors do not provide alt text for images (and this is happens often; a missing alt attribute is among the top 5 validation markup errors) is not there, then it affects them.

, and fixing it is
> >>  required by certain accessibility related standards. 

There's 3 standards here: HTML 4.01 technical recommendation, WCAG 1 & 2 technical recommendation and UAAG 1.0 techical recommendation. The first two are for web authors; only UAAG applies to web browsers like Safari and Chrome.

It would be great if people who
> >> posted that information could comment on how this bug affects accessibility.
> 
> > The National Federation of the Blind sued Target Corp. for the inaccessibility of its Web site.
> 
> I fail to see how this is related to whether not displaying ALT text for broken images hampers accessibility.

I misunderstood the question. If web authors do not declare the alt attribute for image or do not provide/specify a meaningful, useful, helpful alt attribute text for images, then this affects blind people and can affect sighted users (when images are not rendered regardless of why the images are not fetched/rendered).

> It appears that this bug could have been resolved years ago if it wasn't for accessibility concerns - trying to figure out what exactly its accessibility impact can be very challenging if there is none!

If alt attribute text is not rendered inline, then this can affect web experience of sighted users.

regards, Gérard

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