lab188

Friday, March 23, 2007

Alt text for images is tough for Target

The NFIB sues Target because Target can’t figure out how to add alt text to their images. At least, I think that is what the suit is about. If so, usability in large corporate sites may be harder that I thought.

This has been in the queue for a while. The issue seems straight-forward on the surface, but there is more than meets the eye, so I wanted to explore it in print. I really wanted to assure myself that I had correctly read the article earlier in the year. The essence is that Target Stores is being sued by the National Federation of the Blind (NFIB) for refusing to make its site more accessible by the blind. Apparently, Target has some problems putting alternate-text attributes in their image tags for screen readers. The article at Network World quotes the American Federation of the Blind that 10 million people in the United States experience some level of impaired vision. Apparently, when faced with a site that has no alt-text attributes for images or other accessibility attributes, the groups advocating for the blind urge the site owners to update the code. When Target apparently decided to reject their blandishments to make the site easier to use for the blind and low-vision user, the NFIB decided to take legal action. Reading between the lines suggests that Target and the NFIB may have discussing the issue for some time before the lawsuit became public.
That is why I had to read the article three times. Apparently adding alt text attributes to images was more than Target wanted to do. Anyone attending a basic HTML class knows how this works.  I cover the technique for adding alt-text to images in HTML class, introductory level.  Adding those items covers bare-bones accessibility, and is so simple that any site without alternate text has to be stuck in 1990 thinking.
Well, ok, 1997 thinking. Doing a quick check at the W3, I see that HTML 4.0, set as a standard in 1998, shows alt text to be a required attribute. The HTML 4.0 group adds this comment, “To avoid problems with text-only UAs as well as to make image content understandable and navigable to users of non-visual UAs, you need to provide a description with ALT, and avoid server-side image maps.” That would be nine years ago that ALT text was a required attribute of an HTML img tag. Looking back to HTML 3.2 with a January 1997 recommendation date, alt is already part of the img tag. Target hasn’t figured this out.
I would guess, though, that Target uses a content management system to generate page content. Moreover, it may be likely that the creators of the CMS simply did not add the capability to add alt text, or access keys, or tab order, or any of the other simple attributes that have been around for ten years. I would expect that programmers of software that generates HTML to be aware of accessibility issues, but that might not be the case at Target. Perhaps the NFIB/AFIB asked their members to urge Target to update their code, Target did not respond quickly, and the attorneys made their showing.
However, there may be a general lack of clue about how web pages work for blind and low-vision users. Here’s a quote from the article, with a Merck representative talking about making their site accessibility: “On a positive note, Merck officials found that making the site accessible to the blind did not alter the visual presentation, as they had feared.
‘It was this feeling that the text would have to be huge, or you couldn’t have any images on it, it would be text-only pages. It’s not true,’Tattoli says. ‘The pages I could show you before it was accessible and after it was accessible are exactly the same.’ Ouch. I think we may have a long way to go if this is the level of comprehension of usability out there. HTML intro, anyone?