- From: Loretta Guarino Reid <lorettaguarino@google.com>
- Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:38:02 -0700
- To: Sailesh Panchang <spanchang02@yahoo.com>
- Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Sailesh Panchang<spanchang02@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Failure F3 says it is not ok to render images that are essential to understand content via CSS. Agreed. > Consider: a text link with a CSS background image, say for document type PDF or Word. > The author uses offscreen text as part of anchor text to convey this document type and also does so via the title attribute on anchor. Is it ok then to use background image ? > Again if CSS is turned off or user-CSS is used, the offscreen text will be available to all. This will counter the > criticism that the purpose of the image may not be rendered when user-defined CSS is used in place of the one used by the author. > Is it acceptable practice to use background images in this manner then? > Will appreciate feedback. > Sailesh Panchang > > ================================ Response from the Working Group ================================ Because the information provided by the CSS background image would be available to assistive technologies, the use you've described would not be considered a failure of SC 1.1.1. However, the approach you've described can be somewhat difficult to maintain and may still present barriers for some users. For example, a user using high contrast mode, which turns off CSS images, will not encounter the information conveyed by the background images in your example. So, even though what you describe would technically conform, it is not a good idea or good practice. Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact On behalf of the WCAG Working Group
Received on Friday, 28 August 2009 21:38:42 UTC