Alt text on icons pages

[sophie]

I was looking at the icons page for some friends recently when I realised something; each icon on the page has the description as its ALT text, even though the description is given in the next column over anyway.

(for an example of an icons page with descriptions, see my icons page.)

Since I myself don't use a screen reader, I don't know whether this makes things easier or more difficult for those who do, or whether it impacts accessibility in any other way. One of the aforementioned friends, who is blind and uses NVDA (a free, open-source screen reader for Windows), said that they think it's a little odd and that it would probably be better to use the keywords as the ALT text on that page. (Everywhere else, of course, should still use the description.)

I'd love to get input from a wider audience, though, and particularly from people for whom this sort of thing matters, such as those using screen readers. What do you all think? I'd post to dw_suggestions but I'd prefer to know the views from the people here first.

Comments

[treeowl]

I'm not sure how to make this work for DW, but I think a proper alt text for an icon is very often different from a good description of it for sighted people. For example, a photo might have an alt text of "Intensely focused green-haired girl holding a tennis racket, preparing to serve" and a description of "Barbara Jones at the Timbuktu teen tennis championships".