alt text for atom:icon/logo

[Pete Brunet <brunet@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Back in January when I started looking
into Atom and accessibility the following exchange took place:

JS: atom:icon, atom:logo don't have
title or type attributes
BS: <atom:title> and <atom:subtitle>
could be considered the accessible alternative for the icon and logo. Most
modern accessibility guidelines recommend against providing alternative
text for logos and icons when that alternative text would significantly
duplicate content available elsewhere in the document.
BS: A title attribute is a bad idea
because human-readable text shouldn't be represented with attributes. If
it is needed then it should be a text construct. 
JS: True, however, while unlikely, the
title and summary can each contain complex markup. If accessibility guidelines
were to suggest using those elements as the alternate text for the icon/logo,
then the guidelines would need to suggest appropriate content restrictions
for each or else specify a processing model so markup can be dealt with
appropriately.
BS: Right. Restrictions on titles and
summaries are needed even for users without disabilities, like we discussed
a while back when we were debating whether Atom processors should support
HTML/XHTML content in titles. 

I looked around a bit and couldn't find
any uses of atom:icon or atom:logo.  In any event, if there is no
valuable information conveyed by the icon/logo such as when the information
is unimportant or redundant then it should not have "alt text".
 This is done on web pages with Alt="". 

Is it always the case that the icon/logo
is only "eye candy" and that the useful information is what is
found in atom:title/subtitle?  If that's the case I don't see a need
for any changes to atom:icon/logo.

Pete Brunet
                    
                     
                     
         
IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development
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