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Parts of the documentation are fragile with respect to missing images #236

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gonzalo-bulnes opened this issue Jun 27, 2021 · 0 comments

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@gonzalo-bulnes
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Current situation

Currently, some images are essential to the documentation. That happens in several ways:

  1. Images that convey information that is not present in the surrounding text
  2. Text that makes explicit reference to images (which are not always available):

A good example of both cases is:

After you delete the message from the journalist, make sure you see the
below message.
Delete received messages

  1. alt text that doesn't integrate well with the surrounding copy (when images are not displayed for, the alt text in rendered in their place). That causes the text to make less sense than it would if the image / alt text was entirely missing.

Click Save file. In the save dialog, select one of the two folders highlighted in red in the screenshot below:
Download to sandbox folder
The difference between these two folders [...]

Problem

When essential images are not displayed (screen reader, outage) the documentation becomes significantly less useful.

Opportunity

Images could be used to enhance the documentation, while ensuring that the combination of surrounding text and alt text provides all the essential information.

One way to think about it is to treat images as an alternative way to consume the content. If a confirmation message is essential, its content is likely relevant. Readers could be instructed to look for "Message sent." on a given page, while provided with a screenshot that displays such message in the context of that page.

Note: Whether they can see them or not, people using screen readers are aware of what images are! The presence of a screenshot in a piece of documentation isn't unexpected, and there is no need to hide the presence of images when they're not displayed, or avoid repetition too aggressively. Suffice to ensure that their presence is clear, and the information they provide is available in their absence. In other words, when thinking about alt text, the background of a button is an illustrative image for which an empty value is adequate, while a screenshot is likely not (even though the information it conveys may be available in the surrounding text).

How will this impact users?

The documentation would become more accessible to everyone:

  • it would be accessible more often, even when outages prevent images from being rendered
  • it would be accessible from more devices and more situations (e.g. Narrator, TalkBack, VoiceOver, Orca, sunny outdoor environments...)

User Research Evidence

As an approach, the proposed remediation / described opportunity is an extension on the well-documented progressive enhancement strategy for web design. That perspective helps spotting instances of (2).

I personally noticed myself instances of (1) while setting up firewall rules a couple of days ago. Even though my reading device had the ability to display images, they were missing due to an unexpected outage and some configuration information became inaccessible.

I've also experienced (3) in different occasions / websites when using VoiceOver.

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