RE: ALT text revisited

I've always thought of LONGDESC= as being helpful for displaying the textual
equivalent of a graph.  

A graphic like the stock chart at:
http://www.nasdaq.com/sitelayout.asp?section=/analytics/analytics.asp?symbol
=MSFT

could have a LONGDESC that had the textual equivalent.  For example:

-----
MSFT Intraday Chart for February 16, 1998.

9:40am Share price 156.5560 Volume 10,000,000 shares
9:50am Share price 156.5600 Volume 10,010,564 shares
...
4:00pm Share price 157.00 Volume 20,123,456 shares
Market Closed
-----

So "Text version of graphical charts" would be a suggested addition to the
description of LONGDESC.

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Dardailler [mailto:danield@w3.org]
Sent: Monday, February 16, 1998 11:18 PM
To: Liam Quinn
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: ALT text revisited 



> I-4) The LONGDESC attribute:  The LONGDESC attribute should provide a
rich,
> long description of the image.  This attribute is especially useful for
> pure content images like photographs, but is also helpful for logos whose
> visual artistry can convey subtle meanings that would be missed by a
> functional replacement.

It's a little weak and too focused on artistic information.

HTML4.0 says:

longdesc = uri [CT]
     This attribute specifies a link to a long description of the image.
     This description should supplement the short description provided using
     the alt attribute. When the image has an associated image map, this
     attribute should provide information about the image map's contents.
     This is particularly important for server-side image maps.

and I'd like to reinforce that this way in GL:

A long description should be used to supplement an image short
description whenever this short description alone is not sufficient to
convey the meaning/function of the image and detailed understanding of
the image content is required for the overall undertanding of the
document (e.g. a graph or a chart in a formal specification).

Received on Tuesday, 17 February 1998 02:46:01 UTC