Len's CSS solution for the text in image problem - will designers adopt?

Hello,

I really like Len's solution.

Kynn, Cynthia, Marshall, and others who represent designers, do you think 
it will it be accepted by designers?  It's using CSS which won't be 
supported on older browsers which causes me to anticipate designers balking 
at this.

I am being swayed a bit back towards the "idealist" argument, that we 
should hold high standards and encourage all of the pieces to fall into the 
right place to make them happen.  The gist of checkpoint 3.1 is correct, 
"provide text rather than text in images" but today, people are not able to 
satisfy this checkpoint in an acceptable way.

I would really like to say, "logos are the only exception to checkpoint 3.1."

--wendy

At 05:13 PM 10/20/00 , Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
>I don't think there should be an general exception for buttons and image maps.
>
>With style sheets you can put text on a graphical button, even a textured 
>graphical button.  See e.g. the folder tabs
>http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday/wai/tabs/.  This also shows how the result 
>can gracefully degrade when style sheets are turned off: the folder tabs 
>are replaced with rectangular blocks of matching color.
>
>If you don't like that style of degradation, another way to use style 
>sheets would cause the labels to appear above the tabs when style sheets 
>are turned off.
>
>And if you don't want to depend on style sheets at all, see the folder 
>tabs at http://www.altavista.com/,  text in a colored table cell with a an 
>image to form the top slice of the tab, to give rounded corners 
>(unfortunately, they neglected to use ALT="").
>
>I suggest that, in general, accommodating people with low vision is 
>sufficiently important that techniques such as these should be required 
>for double A compliance.
>
>As for exceptions... I have seen a few sites with highly stylized text, 
>e.g.text that's part of a charcoal drawing, or playful letters for kids 
>sites... e.g. snakes biting their tail for an O...  such text has value, 
>there's no standard markup for that and they should be allowed.   But if 
>the text is already garden variety text, or text with a slight drop shadow 
>(which makes it even less legible btw) than I feel absolutely that HTML 
>text should be used.
>
>So it comes down to: does the stylized text add value?  This is a tough 
>call I realize, that's difficult to put it standards.
>
>So I'd say the following:
>As a requirement, use HTML text or have a separate page (Priority 
>2).  Remember: priorities only depend on whether they cause difficulty for 
>people with disabilities; implementation difficulty, or the degree to 
>which a designer wants to use something, is irrelevant.
>
>As a non-mandatory guide, only use such stylized text when it truly adds 
>value from the point of view of a typical user; taking into account people 
>with low vision, as well as people with normal vision who get really 
>annoyed waiting for images maps to download (I'm personally one of the 
>latter BTW).
>
>Len
>
>
>> > You don't have strong control over button appearance - how
>> > good is css support?
>
>--
>Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
>Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at 
>Temple University
>(215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
>http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org
>
>Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
>http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/
>
>The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant: 
>http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--

Received on Monday, 23 October 2000 17:58:45 UTC