Add alt attribute for locked icon on entries in style=light

[faithofone]

Title:
Add alt attribute for locked icon on entries in style=light

Area:
accessibility

Summary:
Right now there's no alt text for the icon that signifies an entry is locked when using style=light.

Description:
When viewing an individual entry while using "style=light", there is an icon over the title of the entry which signifies its security level, such as private, protected or custom.

In most styles, this icon has an alt text. When using "style=light", it does not.

This is an accessibility issue because this icon provides important information about the entry. On one's own entries this information is available at the top of the post in text form, but on an entry belonging to someone else, there is no textual representation of this data. An alt text would make it so that if for some reason (failure to load the image, images turned off, browsers that do not process images at all, etc.) the image is not displayed, the information the image represents is still accessible to the user.

In this instance, there are a lot of issues that could arise from someone mistaking a protected or filtered post for something that was publicly posted.

So my suggestion is to add the proper alt text so that the implementation of this icon on the individual entry pages matches the way it is used on the other pages (like the reading page, or the main journal page).

Poll #6496 Add alt attribute for locked icon on entries in style=light

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 59

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
57 (96.6%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
2 (3.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[feathertail]

Given that accessibility's a top priority on Dreamwidth, this seems less like a suggestion and more like a bug report. Maybe there ought to be more integration between dw_suggestions and the bug tracker, and it should be linked to from there so that people can redirect appropriate stuff to it.

I think it's awesome you noticed this either way, just so you know. >.>b

[faithofone]

Yeah, after I mentioned it Azz said something about how sending it through support might be a quicker fix.

I've always used support for "I'm trying to do something and I CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHY IT ISN'T WORKING?!!?", where as if I know what the problem is, I can suggest that it gets fixed via... suggestions :P

But I feel all bouncy happy now cause you thought it was awesome I noticed it. I use style=light exclusively. I turned off images to see how the edit/memories/track icons displayed, and all of a sudden the lock just disappeared and I went "oops that's not good".

[feathertail]

Heh. ^.^ Well, it was awesome.

Dreamwidth has a Bugzilla install to track bugs ... I filed one there directly once without having to go through Support. I'm not sure how much they advertise it, though.

[faithofone]

I've got an account with the Dw bugzilla, I just don't know how to use it properly yet, and haven't put forth the effort to learn how. I need to do that.

[feathertail]

A good bug-tracking system can really help an open-source project ... after I learned how to use Ubuntu's I started filing a bug pretty much every time something bothered me.

It helps that Launchpad is simple to use, though. Even just the all-gray styling of the DW Bugzilla seems kinda forbidding.

[denise]

We really don't want people filing reports directly with Bugzilla. It's for developers, not for the end user -- as you point out it's fairly foreboding-looking, the usability is horrid, and the workflow is not at all intuitive. Nor is it easy to find duplicates -- if we started asking people to file reports in Bugzilla, it would be overrun very quickly with multiple reports of the same thing (I reject at least 50% of things put in the suggestions moderation queue as duplicates or as things we've repeatedly said we won't/can't do), and the maintenance necessary to keep Bugzilla triaged is a great deal of time and effort that could much more easily be put elsewhere.

The proper place to report bugs is Support; I won't outright reject bug reports from Suggestions, though, since by the time I get to the queue the person has usually waited long enough, and rejecting the report and saying "please go let support know!" runs the risk of the bug report never being made. The line between "this isn't working as designed" (bug) and "this is working as designed, but as designed is stupid" (suggestion) isn't ever something a user should have to know; it can all come to suggestions and we'll handle it from there.

[feathertail]

Ah, okies, that makes sense.

[denise]

Heh, I just realized both of the comments I made about Bugzilla were to you! I wasn't trying to be too emphatic there, I just didn't notice :)

[feathertail]

S'okay! I was confused again. >.>

[azurelunatic]

If you IRC, I'd suggest hanging out in the project channel. A good deal of the bug activity is reported to IRC by the friendly local bugbot. Do you develop, do tech support, both, not sure yet?

[itshiseyes]

I *wish* could use IRC. I'm on Verizon mobile broadband (roomate's internet), and they (Verizon) have all IRC ports blocked. I miss it so much it is nearly to pathetic levels. Last several years IRC was my main way of contacting 90% of the people I talked to on a regular basis.

[faithofone]

And that would be me lol. Editing of comments doesn't help when you got the wrong account logged in.

[azurelunatic]

Also http://chat.mibbit.com, but Mibbit and Freenode don't play nicely together.

[azurelunatic]

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#dreamwidth

[cesy]

There is actually integration between this comm and the bug tracker - anything accepted here gets put automatically into the bug tracker.