User talk:Colin/AltGuideline

Screen reader example

"link graphic bronze head of bearded man with furrowed brow and unruly hair the philosopher from the link Antikythera shipwreck"

Wouldn't the screen reader pause at the end of sections. So grammatically spoken like the following?

"link graphic. bronze head of bearded man with furrowed brow and unruly hair. the philosopher from the link Antikythera shipwreck."

Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 00:41, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure it does pause between separate parts so I've reformatted the sentences per English rules. However, with a thumbnail image, there is a little magnify icon in between the actual picture and the caption. This is generated by the MediaWiki software and simply repeats the link to the image that is already present in the image. The MediaWiki HTML has 'alt=""' for the magnify link image, so the result is the alt text is actually

Link Graphic Bronze head of bearded man with furrowed brow and unruly hair Link Graphic slash magnify dash clip.png The Philosopher from the Link Antikythera shipwreck

which is awful. This blank alt text problem is a pain. I suspect the solution requires either customising the screen reader for Wikipedia (apparently some readers are scriptable) or else producing a skin for Wikipedia that is beneficial for screen readers. It should be relatively simple to remove all the graphic links (and the little magnify icon) from the HTML: there's no attribution/licence issue problem with removing links when the screen reader doesn't show the image anyway. Colin°^Talk 07:53, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I've added a note to this effect. Colin°^Talk 13:27, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• I have an immediate problem with this alt text, which is that I wouldn't know the head is bronze unless I looked at the alt text. I don't think the alt text should be saying any more than I can see from the picture, without needlessly repeating anything in the caption, or making judgements about his hair style. So, for instance, "head of bearded man" seems much better to me. Malleus Fatuorum 13:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I've revised it as suggested. This was the only example I'd kept from the original, and hadn't really studied the text too much as it was an example of the appearance/effect rather than a comment on good/bad text. Colin°^Talk 14:53, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

From Philcha

Audience

• I suggest placing Audience first. --Philcha (talk) 07:45, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
• I suggest "Blind users are frequently frustrated by web sites with absent or unhelpful alternative text ... understand common visual terms well" should be before "Although it is relatively simple to configure a browser ... can jump about and skip portions". --Philcha (talk) 07:45, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

• • Done these. Thanks. Colin°^Talk 07:59, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:ALT#Images without alt text

• I'd place this before Wikipedia:ALT#Images with alt text, on the principle of minimising readers work. --Philcha (talk) 07:31, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

• • This revised version doesn't have the same split. Colin°^Talk 07:59, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:ALT#Examples

• I think "Better alt text" for Adelaide Anne Procter could describe a 17th cent Puritan woman. I suggest "She wears heavily made-up, and dark, shiny, straight combed over the ears and pulled back in a low bun". --Philcha (talk) 22:56, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm not planning to reuse all the examples in the current guideline. However, there is a general issue for biographical articles. Often these don't describe the person's appearance in the body text and rely on what few photos we have to do the job. Should we be describing what the person happened to look like in those photos (which might not be representative of the person) or more generally about their appearance (which would require another source). I'm not sure of the answer at present. Colin°^Talk 07:59, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:ALT#Other_examples

• I think you need all the Wikipedia:ALT#Other examples, and audio, and music scores, which the examples forget - music scores are in sequential in time, 2-d, and can be almost as difficult as maths or chemistry. --Philcha (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
• However, I doubt Wikipedia:ALT#Text and unusual characters, as "better alt text" of the renderings of 袁 and of हिन्दी are not read by most English readers. In EN.WP these examples should have both the graphic renderings and what they mean in English. --Philcha (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
• In the book about Dick Turpin, the page is easily legible at full-size, but smaller in the example. But:
  • The main one File:Dick Turpin Richard_Bayes.djvu is I think not a type that can have a atx text. --Philcha (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
  • The "flawed alt text" of the example is too long, even if it is shortened to "... where he shot his Companion King by Mistake." --Philcha (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look at this and your comments. I agree we need to cover these complicated situations but am not sure where. We could stick them on the end of the guideline while trying to trim down the size considerably. Or we could have an "Advanced Alternative Text" page a bit like the extended image syntax guideline. I worry that making the Alt text guideline huge will put people off reading it. Another option is to move some of the how-to bits into the relevant pages on timelines, maths formula, etc. The main priority now, I think, is to get the current alt-text page replaced, so we can all agree on the new approach. So having fewer examples may help at this stage, to avoid people getting bogged down in discussions on the best way to describe chemical formulae. Colin°^Talk 19:45, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the guideline was premature, as the editors didn't think it through. Scientific formulae are originally complicated, and the simplifications are established after the complicated formulae are proven. For examples: Newton's 3 Law of Motions are the data and equations of Kepler's laws of planetary motion; some simplifications of some of Einstein's equations are described in General_relativity#Model-building. I guess a simple version of WP:ALT will have to wait until a complicated one is complete and proven. --Philcha (talk) 22:56, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow you. I think the existing guideline was the result of a great deal of thought, but took the wrong approach. Also, we don't teach people how to write body text, so a hundred examples of alt text aren't appropriate either. A core set of principles should set most people on the right path, though we need to cover some of the non-obvious unusual cases too. Colin°^Talk 07:59, 11 April 2010 (UTC)