Re: example of site where text-only does not convey all info

For me, personally, the graphics added information in the sense that they 
were concrete examples of the more general terms they illustrated.  For 
example, "interior design" is really an idiom: it means "interior of a 
living space" but it could easily mean design of the interior of a 
PC.  Even though I personally know what it means, I find my mind sort of 
relaxes when given these concrete supports. It is a benefit.  And I suspect 
these concrete examples help people who are blind also.  So they should be 
part of the equivalent.

Hmm.  Perhaps alt text should have "e.g." in front of each picture to make 
it read better?

Of course the pictures also help people with dyslexia but that's not the 
topic of this tread.. we're just talking equivalence here.

Len


At 05:56 PM 1/22/01 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Hmmm. In this case, I think there is not a lot of information presented by
>the graphics. (I am a text-based person, but the descriptions make them seem
>cool but uninformative (at least not able to add anything, although if I
>didn't know what the words are I would probably misinterpret what was going
>on here).
>
>In any case, you would either have to use some very smart image analysing
>algorithms, or get a person to compare. This is a limitation of  the state of
>the art.
>
>There was another site, the Victorian government's "Better Health Channel" -
>http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au - that simply had null alt text for images
>that were links to content. So without a graphics version it was not likely
>that people would know they had missed something. (So far as I know they have
>fixed it now).
>
>Another example of a site is the Australian Open Tennis site -
>http://www.ausopen.com - this one is likely to be gone at the end of the
>competition, which is the end of this week. It provides for different
>versions according to browser capabilities, and mostly works (except
>apparently they assume that the absence of javascript means the absence of
>java support - clearly not true). It makes an intersting test case for
>evaluation.
>
>Cheers
>
>Charles McCN
>
>(Equivalent means "the same in some way". It doesn't need a strict definition
>to be a useful concept in the context of this discussion, which can in part
>lead to giving it a stricter one)
>
>On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Wendy A Chisholm wrote:
>
>   At this a.m.'s telecon I was trying to find a site that I had seen earlier
>   in the week.  I have found out it was not a public site, so I will
>   summarize the issue that we found.
>
>   The site uses rollovers on menu items to display pictures.  For example,
>   "architecture" is associated with an image of an indoor swimming pool,
>   "industrial design" is associated with an image of a station wagon with the
>   back door open so that you can see into the back of the car, "interior
>   design" seems to be associated with a modern, shiny kitchen.
>
>   The issue is that the links on their own "architecture, industrial design,
>   and interior design" give you no context.  The images provide you with an
>   idea of what you might find if you follow the link.  In the text-only
>   version they only provide the links.
>
>   The question we asked this morning is, "how would you determine if these
>   two sites (the text equivalent and the graphical with rollovers) are
>   equivalent?"  They have the same links, but there is information presented
>   on the graphical page that is not available on the text-only.
>
>   --wendy
>   --
>   wendy a chisholm
>   world wide web consortium
>   web accessibility initiative
>   madison, wi usa
>   tel: +1 608 663 6346
>   /--
>
>
>--
>Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 
>134 136
>W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 
>258 5999
>Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
>(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, 
>France)

--
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple 
University
(215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org

Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/

The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant: 
http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

Received on Tuesday, 23 January 2001 17:12:40 UTC