- From: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:27:30 -0500
- To: public-html@w3.org
On Jun 24, 2007, at 12:40 PM, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote: >> why do you not have long descriptions of your photos? On 6/25/07, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote: > Sorry, I don't think it is reasonable to hold hobbyist photographers > to such a standard. It's certainly not something you find in real- > life photo galleries. I understand what you are saying and you have a point. Most hobby galleries probably don't make images accessible. Guess it depends on the definition of "reasonable". George Bernard Shaw said 'The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' [1] Looks like we are back to a fundamental design principle disagreement (e.g. cow paths) again. [2] Despite the rarity of accessible hobby galleries, it's still important to provide mark up so that images can be made accessible. Take for instance professional galleries and educational institutions. If an image is in a the context of a professional gallery or education web site, I'd certainly consider it critical content and give it alt, title, and long description. If you want to improve availability of a long description to people not using screen readers or not using Patrick Lauke's Firefox Longdesc extension [3] you currently can. There are a few ways. For instance, in addition to using the longdesc attribute a web designer can: - Provide a link to the longdesc page with a normal text link. Have a link that says "Text description of this image" is available on a separate page. - Make the complex image itself a link to the long description page. - Put the image description directly in the context of the document where the image occurs. In this last method, everyone can benefit from both image and text information. Two professional galleries, the The Tate Modern's i-Map and Dayton Art Institute use this last technique quite well. i-Map: The Every Day Transformed [4] is Tate Modern's award winning gallery site. It is aimed at blind and partially sighted people with a general interest in art as well as art teachers and their visually impaired students. It does what seems impossible to many people, by making modern art (and its key concepts) accessible to blind and partially sighted people. It is one of the few to describe collections for visually impaired people. The images are highly contrasted and made visible to partially-sighted people. The site is the world leader in making online collections accessible to blind and partially sighted people. Dayton Art Institute [5] is a predecessor of iMap. It gives some good examples of writing descriptions for art. The image description is directly in the context of the document where the image occurs, for example the on-page image description of Claude Monet's "Waterlilies" [6]. Best Regards, Laura [1] http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/692.html [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007May/0940.html [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=273 [4] http://www.tate.org.uk/imap/imap2/ [5] http://tours.daytonartinstitute.org/accessart/ [6] http://tours.daytonartinstitute.org/accessart/object.cfm?TT=ct&ID=72&COM=im&F1=&F2=Waterlilies&F3=&F4=&F5=&F6=&F7=&F8= -- Laura L. Carlson http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
Received on Monday, 25 June 2007 17:27:39 UTC