Re: HELP please!

> http://www.cityofla.org/ANGELSWALK/index.htm
> 1)      When first displaying the page, I see an MAP, which seems to be an 
> image
> with hotspots to click on. When I clicked on one, it took me to a page with
> pointers back to the homepage and seemingly nothing else. When I used the
> tab key to move link to link, I started hearing what appeared to be section
> numbers. Sure enough, clicking on these numbers got me to some text. What
> is the intention here?

Hi, Rich, what you're encountering here is that you go from a main
page *CLICK!* to a page with a map on it.  That map shows the route of
how to walk from somewhere to another.  Dashed lines in various colors
and patterns outline how to walk around.  You then choose which part of
the map to look at and *CLICK* go to a "zoomed in" version of that
part of the map; in other words, blown up at a bigger scale.

Then you can *CLICK* choose which building by clicking on it.  There
are "paths" that lead between the various building, which are numbered
(the key appears on the side of the map, as an image -- you may be
completely unaware of that! the map key lists numbers which correspond
to numbers on the map, and the names of the building.  Also, the numbers
are color coded to correspond to the "paths" of the walking tours.)

> 2)      NextLink, a blurb saying see page 30. Using the screen-reader 
> functions
> to read the page by line, this link seems to be imbeded in some text
> describing the cover. The text, however, is not read when the page first
> displays. 

I don't know why it's loading or not loading, per se.  These are formatted
using tables; in fact the whole page heavily uses to tables to make a
two-column arrangement.  On the left column you have:

* The cover graphic
* A description of it

On the right side:

* directions link
* the "key" to the map, described above
* a message from the director
* a special thanks link

There's more stuff below this, but it's not in the column format.

> 3)      There is text (which is spoken on loading) which says "choose a
> section... No section numbers are spoken on loading but when using the tab
> key to navigate from link to link, they are spoken. Why?

This looks like it's the imagemap.

The image itself has an ALT attribute, but the various areas do NOT.
You are read a number because that is what the links are named, 24.htm
and 6.htm and so forth -- those are the names of the files linked to.

What I can see tells me that 24, for example, should have ALT text
that says "Oviatt Building" and 6 should be "Grand Market Central".
This information is contained on the graphical map key.

However, the map key itself has no need to be graphical in nature.
It really should be presented as text beside numbers, which would be
so much more accessible to everyone.  In fact, the key is a low
quality jpg image, which means it is blurry and hard to read when
I, someone with (corrected by glasses) 20/20 vision, try to read it.

The map key is a bad idea as an image overall.

> I hope at least some of this makes sense. I'm not real sure how to describe
> this stuff. Again, any help is much much appreciated.

I hope I described enough for you to be able to identify what you are
not able "see" (hear) from this.  This page needs lots of work to
make it usable, I think.  You are losing too much information because
of the way they have put it together; ideally, your description and
my description should be the same in content even if the presentation
is wrong, but I am seeing lots of things from this site that you have
no access to.

Hope this helps,

--Kynn

Received on Friday, 8 January 1999 17:18:26 UTC