Re: LONGDESC: some current problems and a proposed solution added to the wiki

Peter Krantz wrote:
> Ok, I was assuming that readers of this thread could imagine some
> other scenario. Let's change the example to make it more realistic:
> 
> <picture src="http://homepage.floodcity.net/users/mastdog/ezrachurch.jpg">
>  <p>The coferedat  brigades of Lee, Thomas and Schfield  surround the

Did you mean "confederate brigades"?

> city of Atlanta.</p>
>  <p>2 miles from Atlanta, close to Ezra church, Logan's base camp was
> set up.</p>
>  <p>Inside atlanta were:</p>
>  <ul>
>    <li>....</li>
>  </ul>
> </picture>
> 
> In my opinion this counts as reasonable fallback content for the 
> linked picture. And, it isn't unreasonable to assume that this content 
> would be valuable for all visitors

In that case, there is little value in explicitly providing the text as 
a long description.  It is only useful if the image contains significant 
information that is unavailable or cannot be deduced from elsewhere in 
the page.

If the image is merely a graphical representation of the surrounding 
content, then just provide suitable alt="" and title="" attributes that 
explain what the image is.  For that example, I would recommend just 
marking it up something like this:

   <img src="http://homepage.floodcity.net/users/mastdog/ezrachurch.jpg"
        alt="The confederate brigades of Lee, Thomas and Schfield
             surround the city of Atlanta."
        title="Map illustrating the location of the confederate brigades
              around Atlanta">

   <p>The confederate brigades of Lee, Thomas and Schfield  surround the
      city of Atlanta.</p>
   <p>2 miles from Atlanta, close to Ezra church, Logan's base camp was
      set up.</p>
   <p>Inside Atlanta were:</p>
   <ul>
     <li>....</li>
   </ul>

Alternatively, the image could be marked up within a <figure> using the 
title="" as the caption (<legend>).

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Sunday, 1 July 2007 08:23:16 UTC