According to our style guide, yes, screen readers do read the alt text.
The style guide also says that alt text must be 150 characters or fewer
in length. For a description longer than 150 characters, use the
longdesc attribute of the img tag (in HTML; seems to be longdescref in
DITA); this is also read by screen readers.
Kim
Laura Stewart wrote:
On 1/17/07, Bernt M. Johnsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The HTML standard does not require a browser to show the alt text
unless the image cannot be rendered:
User agents must render alternate text when they cannot support
images, they cannot support a certain image type or when they
are configured not to display images. (HTML 4.01)
Firefox is a graphical browser and as such does not ahev to display
it, while w3m and lynx are text only browsers and "must" render the
text.
Are you saying that if I had a screen reader (for people unable to see
the screen, which is why the alt text is added to the image in the
first place) that the text would be read by the screen reader, even
though it doesn't appear when I mouse over the text?
