Re: [Lynx-dev] The alts for images in newyorker.com

[Chuck Martin]

I accidentally sent a private reply to Russell when I meant to reply to
the list.  Apologies to Russell.  Here is the reply I sent:

On Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 07:51:15AM -0600, russellbell@gmail.com wrote:
> newyorker.com is one of the few websites that takes seriously alts for
> its images (if you don't know, an image tag is allowed to have
> alternative text that a browser can display if it can't, or won't, the
> image - who but we lynxsters read them?)

Unfortunately, graphical browsers generally display alt text when you
mouse over an image, with the result that most web pages that provide
alt text misuse it to provide additional information on mouseover instead
of its intended purpose, meaning that lynx users end up seeing text that
is totally meaningless out of the context of the image it replaces.
Often this meaningless text appears in the middle of a sentence, causing
the sentence to look like gibberish.  I'm sure this is even more confusing
to blind users than it is to me, since I can usually see where the alt
text starts and ends.

Chuck