Re: Geospatial mapping applications

On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 10:16 PM, WCAG 2.0 Comment Form <nobody@w3.org> wrote:
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> Name: Joel Starkey
> Email: joel.starkey@ga.gov.au
> Affiliation: Australian Government Department
> Document: W2
> Item Number: (none selected)
> Part of Item:
> Comment Type: general comment
> Summary of Issue: Geospatial mapping applications
> Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
> Are there any inclusions / exclusions in the new guidelines that identify accessibility requirements for geospatial mapping web applications, similar to Google Maps? The Government Agency I work for, Geoscience Australia, produces many applications of this type and I would like to know what effect we will have if we adopt these guidelines. An example of a particular mapping application we host can be viewed at
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> http://webmap.ga.gov.au/imf-natural_hazards/imf.jsp?site=natural_hazards_earthquake
>
> Proposed Change:
>

================================
Response from the Working Group
================================
There are no exclusions for complex non-text content such as
geospatial maps. However, if your example is typical, the "Recent
Earthquakes" link provides a long description of the information
provided by the map. In addition, your example provides an alternate
version of the data used to generate the map via the search feature.
The map could contain a short description that indicates what kind of
data it contains and tells the user where to find the longer
description. See Situation B in Understanding Success Criterion 1.1.1
for similar techniques.

Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact


On behalf of the WCAG Working Group

Received on Friday, 3 October 2008 19:57:30 UTC