Re: method for providing programmatically associated long description

Steven Faulkner, Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:00:56 +0100:
> Hi all,
> another possible method for providjng a programmatically associated 
> long description for an image:
> 
> <img src="images/table.gif" alt="Bar Chart showing average rainfall 
> in millimetres by country and season."  usemap="#longdesc">
> <map name="longdesc">
> <area alt="bar chart long description" coords="2,318,404,341" 
> href="details.html#table">
> </map>

The @coords in your example, in effect, makes the <img>/<object> a 
link, for all users. The intention? Also, it is tedious to have create 
those @coords.  Why not simply wrap the <img> in an anchor element, 
then?

That said, you probably don't need to use @coords: I just I did some 
testing of VoiceOver, Jaws and NVDA (with IE, Webkit, Opera, Firefox), 
to check whether or not they always consider an <area> element a link. 
[1] (Short answer is that they don't see it as a link, whenever one 
uses area{visibility:hidden}.) And if I remember correctly, then none 
of them require the @coords attribute to be used, in order consider the 
<area> element a link. Also, HTML5 does not require the @coords 
attribute for <area> - if I can trust Validator.nu.

So, in a summary, if authors can skip the @coords attribute, then this 
method becomes simpler to use.

[1] 
http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-new/2010-August/002166.html
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Wednesday, 25 August 2010 12:53:08 UTC