Accessibility incrementally: Image Description

RantWoman got asked a very nice question today:

"We test accessibility with an automated test process but we are never sure...?"

RantWoman appreciates being asked. Frankly, any testing will be a step forward. Plus for ephemeral content, content that will not be needed very long such as a survey, just do the best you can. To the extent that RantWoman charms others around her into participating in surveys, RantWoman's network of able and enthusiastic blind people and everyday accessibility testers  is happy to test and to share tips that work in our different tools and to complain  with suggestions for the next iteration.

But here are two examples from historylink.org.

RantWoman loves historylink.org. RantWoman loves the historical content. RantWoman finds the site easy to navigate and sometimes uses it as a place for people to practice navigation with accessibility tools. RantWoman loves historylink.org for including decent descriptions of photos.

Digression: Recently RantWoman was helping someone test something and suggested historylink.org as a test site. The person testing was not a screen reader user and was using some kind of automated guidance. The automated guidance was completely missing the photo description. RantWoman was interacting with a different part of the test protocol and decided not even to fuss about what the test protocol as opposed to the screen reader did or did not find. But today, RantWoman found lovely description, not super detailed but lovely descriptions.

However, RantWoman also found an example of a common vexation. RantWoman was just letting the screen reader read, not really looking at the screen. RantWoman has been scraping her eyeballs over enough tiny print for other reasons and was happy just to read the various "On this Date" entries. Then the screen reader came to things that sound like:

SponsorLogos/Logo00001
...
to
SponsorLogos/Logo00012

and
EduPartnersLogos/Logo00001
...
to

EduPartners/Logos/Logo00005

This is not terrible. Well, except RantWoman likes to THANK sponsors and education partners and would love for her screen reader to be able to tell her who the sponsors are. RantWoman awhile ago encountered the problem on a series of photos on a different site. RantWoman is not even going to pretend to write enough code to suggest how to address the problem, but thanks someone who does write code for thinking further about it.

Word.