- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 16:24:50 -0500 (EST)
- To: John Gardner <john.gardner@orst.edu>
- cc: Joe Clark <joeclark@interlog.com>, bulatov@dots.physics.orst.edu, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Actually, I don't think it is easy to provide words which replace a map - after all, a map itself contains lots of words and things. Now if that map were built using vector graphics instead of rasterised graphics, and labelled appropriately, it should be possible to get more information, both visually and non-visually than it is by inspection of a traditional rasterised image of a map. In the meantime it is possible to do the same thing on the gross scale, by building a web of information. But it would need to be pretty large. Hence the SVG grop, which holds great promise for accessibility. Charles McCathieNevile On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, John Gardner wrote: I enjoyed your "Break This Page" discussion of accessible graphics. There is a fundamental limitation to the alt and longdesc tag methods however. For many graphics, a picture is worth a great deal more than a thousand words. For example, just try to describe a US map in words that provide the reader approximately the same information as the map. Can be done, but it would take weeks to read it. We have a discussion of "accessible object-oriented graphics" at http://dots.physics.orst.edu/graphics.html that you might enjoy. We have linked some examples of our preliminary research efforts to go one step, maybe several steps, better than word descriptions. I would be pleased to hear reactions. John Gardner Science Access project Oregon State University --Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +1 617 258 0992 http://www.w3.org/People/Charles W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI MIT/LCS - 545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139, USA
Received on Thursday, 25 March 1999 16:25:04 UTC