Re: Accessible Graphics

Actually, I don't think it is easy to provide words which replace a map -
after all, a map itself contains lots of words and things. Now if that map
were built using vector graphics instead of rasterised graphics, and
labelled appropriately, it should be possible to get more information,
both visually and non-visually than it is by inspection of a traditional
rasterised image of a map.

In the meantime it is possible to do the same thing on the gross scale, by
building a web of information. But it would need to be pretty large.

Hence the SVG grop, which holds great promise for accessibility.

Charles McCathieNevile

On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, John Gardner wrote:

  I enjoyed your "Break This Page" discussion of accessible graphics.  There
  is a fundamental limitation to the alt and longdesc tag methods however.
  For many graphics, a picture is worth a great deal more than a thousand
  words.  For example, just try to describe a US map in words that provide
  the reader approximately the same information as the map.  Can be done, but
  it would take weeks to read it.
  
  We have a discussion of "accessible object-oriented graphics" at
  http://dots.physics.orst.edu/graphics.html
  that you might enjoy.  We have linked some examples of our preliminary
  research efforts to go one step, maybe several steps, better than word
  descriptions.  I would be pleased to hear reactions.
  
  John Gardner
  Science Access project
  Oregon State University
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Thursday, 25 March 1999 16:25:04 UTC