Re: advice on alt text for image maps

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 01:57:04AM +0200, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 2014-01-13 0:57, John Foliot wrote:
...

> >>How would it help to know that there is a map when you cannot see that
> >>map?
> >Because it is there. You truly seem to be caught up in a very binary "Blind
> >versus Can_See_@_20/20" perspective that surprises me Jukka: alt text is not
> >just for blind people.
> 
> There is a true dichotomy in the way the alt text has always been
> defined: an <img> element is rendered either by presenting the image
> pointed to by the src attribute or by presenting the alt attribute
> value. Browsers (and authors) have confused this by showing the alt
> attribute value as "tooltip", but that was in the past.
> 
> Many authors who have little idea of the meaning and effect of the
> alt attributes but some reason for writing them have routinely
> written descriptions like alt="Large yellow bullet", instead of
> trying to write text that performs the same function as the image.
> I'm afraid examples like map alt="Map of Katoomba"  are very bad
> examples, as they tend to enforce the misunderstanding that authors
> are supposed to write alt texts that describe or comment on images.
> 
> There are surely situations where alt="Map of Katoomba", e.g. on a
> page that has such a map simply as a content image, like in an
> article that tells about the history of Katoomba. It is unrealistic
> to expect authors to provide a real alternative text - text that
> would be really equivalent to the map should contain a huge amount
> of details, in addition to well-written high-level description. The
> best we can do (to people who do not see the image) is to announce
> the presence of such an image. But when an <img> element is used for
> user interface that lets the user select between two or more areas,
> either graphically using an image or textually using names of areas,
> then the alt text should only contribute to achieving that purpose.

So... maybe a better example with less hem-and-haw is needed for this
page. Something that can tell an author what they should do, regarding
alt text, in a clickable image map.

-Mallory

Received on Monday, 13 January 2014 10:04:28 UTC