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A11y Slackers Gitter Channel Archive 31st of August 2017

What fresh hell is THIS now? - Patrick Lauke
  1. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 06:31
    [jv] Is it myth or true that alt text can help in search engine ranking?
  2. [caesar] It's probably both and neither. Nobody really knows how SEO works except Google (and even then it's probably pretty vague and fuzzy)
  3. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 06:36
    [caesar] I doubt anybody can prove it one way or another
  4. [caesar] So personally I go with whatever's best for the users, and let Google do what Google does
  5. [sophieschoice_slack] It does help, but since other parts of the algorithm play a big part as well I think it doesn´t have that boost as in the beginning of SEO-days (same for META-keywords, though that is almost phased out).
  6. [sophieschoice_slack] But nevertheless: clients first, search engines seconds ;) Though if you do usability and accessibility well, SEO is taken care of already (for about 80/90%)
  7. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 06:44
    [jv] @sophieschoice_slack clients first means?
  8. [sophieschoice_slack] people :) The visitors of your website
  9. [jv] oh ok
  10. [sophieschoice_slack] or customers if you have a webshop.
  11. [jv] we have a content marketing team which takes alt text as a medium which help in SEO
  12. [jv] they use alt text keeping SEO in mind
  13. [jv] they dont what screenreaders are
  14. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 07:40
    [julie-g] Oh dear - maybe demonstrate to them what it sounds like using one of the free screenreaders
  15. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 08:02
    [daniel_koster] Google actually penalises spammy ALT (or any other) texts, so keep that in mind as well. Try to keep the ALT text natural while adding keywords that will help you AND screenreaders: https://moz.com/learn/seo/alt-text
  16. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 08:31
    [daniel_koster] Proof of the penalising bit: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016?hl=en
  17. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 12:14

    [donnabungard] @jv
    According to MOZ

    Using alt text on your images can make for a better user experience, but it may also help earn you both explicit and implicit SEO benefits. Along with implementing image title and file naming best practices, including alt text may also contribute to image SEO.
    While search engine image recognition technology has vastly improved over the years, search crawlers still can't "see" the images on a website page like we can, so it's not wise to leave the interpretation solely in their hands. If they don't understand, or get it wrong, it's possible you could either rank for unintended keywords or miss out on ranking altogether.
    In that sense, alt text offers you another opportunity to include your target keyword. With on-page keyword usage still pulling weight as a search engine ranking factor, it's in your best interest to create alt text that both describes the image and, if possible, includes a keyword or keyword phrase you're targeting.

    Hope that helps!

  18. [jv] so it helps in SEO according to MoZ
  19. powrsurg
    @powrsurg
    Aug 31 13:08
    Back in the day, I always told clients that Google is basically a blind (and sometimes I included deaf) user trying to experience your website and that on-site SEO is mostly about doing things that are also good at accessibility so your goal should really be to make the site as accessible as possible and that will improve their SEO.
  20. Then when doing it they'd see things about color contrast and get upset since that could go against stuff they wanted to do, and that didn't have an SEO impact and things started to fall apart
  21. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 13:29
    [sophieschoice_slack] Exactly Powersurg !
  22. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 14:18

    [stephenkilbourn] I have a question about appropriate alt text. We are redoing a homepage that shows all of the logos logos for clients that the company works with. All of the logos link to the same "Results" page on our site and on hover there is a "View Results" text that appears below each logo.

    It seems confusing to put the alt text for logos as each company's name because the link does not go to something specific to that company. Would it be better to make the alt text something like "See results of companies including ABC Corp"? for each logo or is there a better solution?

  23. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 14:30
    [clairebones] @stephenkilbourn I'd suggest maybe this is highlighting a different UX problem - a bunch of different links with different icons all going to the exact same page content seems quite confusing to me as a user - perhaps you'd be better having one button below them all that says like "See the results of these projects", or having a different results page for each one?
  24. [stephenkilbourn] Yes, that would be my preferred solution. It isn't the best UX for anyone, but unfortunately as of right now management wants this. :\
  25. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 14:36
    [clairebones] ah isn't it always the way :p
  26. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 14:50
    [kivi] Is usability testing an option? You can really open people's eyes when they see actual users struggling with a design.
  27. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 17:35
    [backwardok] @stephenkilbourn are the logos all within the same container? could you just have the container be a single anchor with text that indicates to view all results so that there aren’t X number of tab stops?
  28. LauraOU
    @LauraOU
    Aug 31 17:48
    Seems like Youtube fixed their unlabelled play button...
  29. zakim-robot
    @zakim-robot
    Aug 31 17:56
    [stephenkilbourn] @backwardok They were in individual containers, so lots of messiness. However, I was caught in the latest round of layoffs right after I responded to clairebones earlier, so I guess the company is on their own for making it more user friendly /shrug
  30. [clairebones] sorry to hear it @stephenkilbourn