Screenreader users: What should proper behavior here be?

[denise]

Someone reported that the alt text for icons on the /icons page (for instance, https://denise.dreamwidth.org/icons) is behaving weirdly and labeling every image as "(Default)" when viewed. A bit of investigation has turned up that it has to do with how the function that generates the alt text is called -- it does weird things when it's not called in the context of a comment/post.

The coder who ran down the issue is looking for some guidance on how things should work to fix the problem, and one of the questions raised was: is the alt text even necessary in that context? Alt text for icons is formed by the icon's keyword + description, and all that information is right there with the icon anyway: it's displayed next to the icon, and (if I'm not mistaken) is read out immediately after the icon.

So, screenreader users: Is having the alt text for each icon read to you on that page helpful, given that it's immediately repeated afterwards, or is it annoying? Should we fix the bug so that each icon gets the correct keyword information in the alt text, or should we just blank the alt text (on that page alone, not everywhere!) so you don't have to hear it twice?

Curious About Testing

[jazzyjj]

Hi everyone. With today being Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I'm curious whether anybody has tested either the main Dw site or their own journals and/or communities with Wave or any of the other automated tools out there? I don't know enough of the technical details of these tools, but based on my personal use case scenario Dw works great. To that end, I'm also curious whether people here prefer the automated testing tools, manual testing or a combination of both. Sorry if this is a repeat.
http://www.afb.org/blog/afb-blog/celebrating-global-accessibility-awareness-day-2016/12