[Sigia-l] 508 Compliance - Alt Tags for Button Images

[P.J. Gardner]

Hello,

Continuing on the "on-line seminar" I sent yesterday on the use of ALT and
TITLE attributes, I forgot to mention one very important detail about the
JAWS screen reader that is used by many blind (and low vision) computer
users.

One of the most frequently used JAWS features is a dialog box that users can
bring up that gathers all the links on the page in alphabetical order.  What
that means is that your link text should make sense out of context (here's
where lots of "Learn more" links cause a problem), and that they should
begin with as many different letters as possible, since like other dialog
boxes, you can locate items in the list by typing their initial letters.
The other useful tip in this regard is to load useful information at the
beginning of the TITLE text.

A tall order, but worth thinking about.  Hard to implement for existing
pages, but worth knowing about for new development.

Best Regards,
P.J.

P.J. Gardner
Information Designer
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Gardner Information Design, Inc.
pjgardner at GIDI.biz
www.GIDI.biz
781-646-6849
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