On Sun, 4 May 2008 21:38:54 +0100 "Stuart Lawler" stuart.lawler@visionline.ie wrote:

Dear Ivan,

Many thanks for your help.

I'm not quite sure what lines to remove, or at least what to delete.

To remove the link change

print '<h1><a href="'. check_url($base_path) .'" title="'. $site_title .'">';

to

print '<h1>';

and

print $site_html .'</a></h1>';

to

print $site_html .'</h1>';

to change the alt/title of the logo if you're not willing to use the site title change

print '<img src="'. check_url($logo) .'" alt="'. $site_title .'" id="logo" />';

to

print '<img src="'. check_url($logo) .'" alt="somethingofyourchoice" id="logo" />';

if you want to use the site_title change in in the Admin pages

Finally, to answer your question, descriptive alt titles are always good for screen readers. The title is important too, but for images a separate, more descriptive alt title is prefered.

Let me explain more clearly, I already add alt tags everywhere the image should convey content and it is not there for layout or aesthetic reasons.

You may have <a href="link" title="something1"><img src="path" alt="something2" title="something3"></a>

If you're not blind you're going to see the image and just if you pass the mouse over the image you'd see the title. That may be great for Search Engines too... but I can immagine that if you're blind you've no choice other than listening/feeling something1, something2, something3... that may be a bit obnoxious if all you need is *one* description. Or maybe current software will "show" just title over alt or alt over title etc... or just the link title...

Still I think choices here can make the experience more enjoyable for blind people. I'd just use the image alt that should describe the image and since there is no text for not blind people it means that the image is enough descriptive of where the link will take, adding the title to the link is going to annoy people that have to "listen" to the page or read it through braille. But... I never had to use the web in such a way so I may be wrong. What is the "right" choice?

Then you said you were going to kill the link around the logo. Why? I'd say it is a navigational help, but maybe it is just an hindrance if you've to read the page differently.

On Sun, 4 May 2008 22:49:33 +0100 "Stuart Lawler" stuart.lawler@visionline.ie wrote:

Dear Ivan,

...

Then you said you were going to kill the link around the logo.

Why?

Simply because for a screen reader user, the word Link, will indicate that the graphic will link to something else. When we press enter on the link to activate it, nothing happens, because of course, it doesn't, so it really isn't necessary.

If you're on another page it may be helpful, if you're on the home it may be misleading... at least it seems it is more misleading for blind people than for people that can see the logo and won't notice the link. I guess because once the page is seen through a text reader, braille tablet... that link is much more evident and "distracting" for blinds.

Interesting thing. I think the same concept could be applied to other part to a web site to make it more "readable". Some repetitions could sound more annoying if you get them through a text reader... I bet if someone kept repeating "Hello" at the beginning of each sentence I'd get annoyed pretty soon ;)

With regard to alt and title text, the Screen reader will read both, but alt text, in the example you give below, would be spoken as well as title.

so link with title + image with alt and title is going to make people using a text readers pretty bored.

If I can ask you one final question for now.

The solution you gave me for killing the link and changing the alt text worked perfectly, but now, I seem to have a heading1 with the site title and right after it, a heading2 with the word Navigation.

That should be OK. That somehow the order in which people will read the page... just they will get the spatial representation. Navigation should be in the left bar, but it is the next thing you're going to read from left to right top to bottom after the heading.

If you'd prefer to let people "see" the content of the page first in spite of the navigation block you'd configure drupal to display the navigation block on the right column... but I think that may not be enough depending on how the HTML is build up... since left and right may be completely controlled by css and text reader don't read css rather the HTML. In case of garland anyway moving the navigation menu on the right column should let you listen the content of the page and the navigation later. I can't decide which would be best.

With my screen reader, these show up on the same line, although I understand that visually this may not be the case and they may well look fine.

You're right.

Could you tell me why this might be occurring and how I might space them out a bit more?

I'd know better how screen readers and text readers works. But I think my hypothesis should be right, they don't understand css and a div is not enough to make them display content on different lines on screen reader.

The site can be viewed at www.iscc.ie/test/

You've to reduce the logo size. Consider also that the logo background is white while the heading background is cyan (sort of).