It is often the case that the description text, the alternate text and the title attribute are the same, and we can present the user with only one "description" input field. The advantage is that it's much easier to make your website WCAG compliant (which requires the additional attributes), I don't know of any drawbacks that such a change would have.

This change can be done at the theme layer, but ideally it could be done one level above that so that the behavior applies to all formatters (imagecache, etc), not only the one provided by imagefield. However, that level above is part of filefield, where non-image files are also processed so it wouldn't make sense to have it there.

If this is a good feature and I can have some direction on where it belongs, I'd be happy to write a patch for it.

Comments

csc4’s picture

csc4 commented

Sounds like an excellent idea - an option to make the description the node title would also be very welcome to my users.

Kripsy’s picture

Kripsy commented

To even further expound on this, if there were a way to make the image title automatically the node title that would be even better.

robertdjung’s picture

robertdjung commented

seems appropriate.

quicksketch’s picture

quicksketch
he/him
commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

The advantage is that it's much easier to make your website WCAG compliant (which requires the additional attributes), I don't know of any drawbacks that such a change would have.

ALT and title texts do not have the same purpose. Alt text is read by screenreaders as a substitute for seeing the image. As such it usually describes (in less than 80 characters) what the image contains. Titles are longer and are used to supplement what is being displayed in the image.

Easily making a website "WCAG Compliant" doesn't mean you're actually helping your visitors if you're not filling out the properties with their intended values. See our discussion in #193887: Accessibility enhancements for other changes we're working on to make ImageField more accessible.

See also these helpful links:
http://fadtastic.net/2007/04/19/proper-use-of-alt-and-title-attributes/
http://www.gawds.org/show.php?contentid=28

a_c_m’s picture

a_c_m commented

I think this might be able to be solved with token?

Allowing a [file-description] (and perhaps node tokens too) token in both title and alt tags could get around this issues. I would force the use of an alt tag but some modules (e.g. Galleria) use the description tag, which makes life more difficult.

JmsCrk’s picture

JmsCrk commented

Sounds good, imho this is an important feature for sites where a client uploads their own images - they only need to fill in one box ('description') but the image gets alt and title text when saved.

How would this be accomplished with tokens as you suggest? Will that require a change to imagefield module?

EDIT: Any tips on how this could be done at the theme layer as suggested? (For a quick fix.)