Question for the group. What is the expected behaviour for screen readers in Brightspace HTML...

Melissa.D.377

Question for the group. What is the expected behaviour for screen readers in Brightspace HTML areas (e.g. Module or Unit descriptions) when encountering an image that has been marked as decorative (alt="")?

 

In testing with NVDA and JAWS in the Description area of a Unit in the New Content Experience, we noticed that the screen reader effectively skipped over the image that was marked as decorative, i.e., didn't acknowledge it at all. Is this correct / expected? Just wondering since we observe different behaviours in other applications, e.g. PPT.

 

Thanks!

-Melissa and Fizza

Carin.H.549

Yes. That is expected. In this case, the screen-reader takes decorative to mean "unnecessary, only serves a visual purpose but conveys no information, move along, nothin' to see here." Marking something as decorative is designed to reduce clutter so a screen-reader won't read a bunch of stuff like "Spacer", "border", etc. Carin