Comment on Mozilla Firefox new alt-text generator powered by "fully private on-device AI model"

IllNess@infosec.pub ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Kissaki@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  MDN <figure> and <figcaption> has no mention of changed img alt intentions. Which makes sense to me.

  figure does not invalidate or change how img is to be used. The caption may often not but can differ from the image description. If alt describes the image, figcaption captions it.

  <figure>
    
    <figcaption>Me and my mates</figcaption>
  </figure>
  ```</figcaption></figure>
  

  source

  • IllNess@infosec.pub ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yes you can use both but I’ve seen some front end developers blank out alt altogether when they are using figcaption.

    I did not find this practice in MDN Web Docs but I found it in an other place:

    If you’re using an image that has a caption, it may not need alt text if the caption contains all of the relevant visual information.

    • boia.org/…/should-you-include-alt-text-for-pictur…

    ---

    This doesn’t have to do with figcaption but a blind user in Stack Overflow suggested you should empty out alt for actionable objects.

    If you can interact with the image to perform actions (click, etc.), or if the icon conveys an information, then you must set a non-empty alt. It must be a function description, not a objective description of the image.
    Example 1: “Go back” is good, while “Blue left arrow” is bad.

    • stackoverflow.com/…/accessibility-difference-betw…

    ---

    I was just wondering what Mozilla’s method was for finding these images and if they took other things in to consideration like decorative images.

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    • Kissaki@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Interesting. It also made me look at the MDN docs again. img alt is consistent to that. I wasn’t aware of the empty for omittable images.

      I also looked at figure again, and in my interpretation it does declare that figcaption is to be used.

      figure represents self-contained content. figcaption provides the accessible name for the parent. The accessible name is is the text associated with an HTML element that provides users of assistive technology with a label for the element.

      The resolution order being aria-labelledby, aria-label, input[type=button][value], input[type=image]|img|area[alt], …

      So figcaption takes priority over img alt.

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      • IllNess@infosec.pub ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Thanks for the info. The Accessible name calculation page is really interesting.

        source
    • Kissaki@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Where is that quote from?

      source

      • IllNess@infosec.pub ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I put a link after the quote. That’s the source.

        source

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