- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 17:50:04 -0800
- To: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>, Geoff Deering <gdeering@acslink.net.au>
- Cc: <kynn-eda@idyllmtn.com>, Slaydon Eugenia <ESlaydon@beacontec.com>, <gian@stanleymilford.com.au>, <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
At 3:17 PM -0500 1/20/02, Charles McCathieNevile wrote: >Having pictures of the text and the real text should meet the requirement >(having pictures and alt text does not) but technically fails the checkpoint, >and in my very personal opinion is ugly enough to be worth avoiding... Right, which is why it's a broken checkpoint. One thing we have to be careful of is that there are several types of "guidelines" which we may accidentally conflate together: * Those based on pure access to information * Those based on usability concerns * Those based on "style" Access to information: If I have a web site which has a navigation bar as images, and I provide alt text for those images, and I provide a redundant set of text links at the bottom (remember, this is a checkpoint for certain image maps under WCAG1, so the technique is clearly not flawed), then I am ensuring actual access to information. Usability: If I can find that information EASILY, it's not a usability problem; if I can't, it probably is. For example, "text-only version" link at the BOTTOM of the page is worse usability than one at the top. Sure, you can find the info, but good luck trying. Style: Some things are just tacky. Saying "click here for more on Senator Wilson" is not an accessibility problem, nor is it a usability problem. It just doesn't look right. Our checkpoints so far have willy-nilly combined pure access, usability, and style in a way that leads to confusion and mis- interpretation. Also note that usability for one audience may be accessibility or style for another. In this case, I think pictures of text and real text, while it does fail the (in-need-of-revision) checkpoint test, do pass the access to information test. There is no usability test for this encoded in the guidelines (and in fact the Guidelines suggest "text" and "pictures" for imagemaps), although the usability here may be poor. Stylistic demands, I think, are not our main priority here, are they? --Kynn -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire http://kynn.com/resume January Web Accessibility eCourse http://kynn.com/+d201 Forthcoming: Teach Yourself CSS in 24 Hours
Received on Sunday, 20 January 2002 21:11:46 UTC