StyleGuides
Find solution for referring to buttons/icons with difficult images
Some modern GUIs use icons and buttons that cannot be easily described or recognised (cf Save and Open and similar) and neither do they have a tooltip or other help text.
Need to determine how to refer to these GUI objects to make them easily recognisable, to make future references easy, and that takes into account accessibility, screen readers, and similar.
Options include:
- A textual description of the icon or button, followed by an inline image on first use.
- Refer to the icon or button by what it does (what would ordinarily be
Saveor similar), followed by an inline image on first use.
As a wishlist, I'd propose that we consider OPEN text-to-speech when taking this decision.
As a wishlist, I'd propose that we consider OPEN text-to-speech when taking this decision.
This has actually come up before in the context of screen readers and was put in the too-hard basket at the time. Is it time to revisit? What about all the other images that we use in our content?
Small steps, I guess. Adding some description to icons would avoid a problem in OPEN, and it would help slightly for screen readers, but I don't think our courses are usable at all using screen readers (labs are likely 99% inaccessible), so we're not going to get feedback or complaints any time soon about that (because it cannot be used at all).
If we can solve the problem in a way that helps OPEN and it's not terrible complicated, I'd go for it. If it's too complex, we can move on. I'm just saying it should be considered.