- From: Jon Hanna <jon@spinsol.com>
- Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 11:52:06 +0100
- To: "WAI Interest Group" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > What's the goal? Is it "accessibility", is it "accessibility > and usability", and for what audiences? Are you shooting for > WCAG compliance (at what level), 508, or just best practices? It's not something I'm dealing with at the moment, but it has come up in the past and I started thinking about it after coming across a site like that while using Lynx. 508 doesn't affect me (I'm in Ireland), generally I am given a site to build and want to make it as accessible and usable as possible to as many people as possible because then I feel I've done my job well. > What sort of server-side solutions do you have available to > employ? Lets say none, as most of the sites I have the most control over (i.e. it's me who makes the call in how an issue like this is dealt with) are no-budget non-profits I do voluntarily rather than the sites I do professionally (were I generally write server-side code and nothing else) and often no server-side control is available. Also this is largely hypothetical and I just find client-side solutions more interesting :) However, don't let that stop you suggesting good server-side solutions. > I'm not being a smart-ass here. The issues related to web > accessibility have advanced quite a deal beyond simply "put alt > text in images" and there are a lot of questions that need to be > answered as background before a "good answer" can be formulated. Yes. What intrigued me about this problem when it occurred to me was that it's somewhere where "put alt text in images" becomes problematic. To reply to two mails in one, Jamie Mackay wrote: > I might be misreading this, but if the image 'adds "value" or > comprehension > to > the text' then surely the image should be described in the alt tag, > and if necessary, with D and Longdesc links, otherwise those not > viewing the image are missing out on this added value? Lets say (hypothetically) that all images here add value as images only. E.g. you have an news article about something the US President does in relation to Ireland (making my example relevant both to me and the US citizens on this list :) Now if I have a photograph of the US President near that article it adds value to an image-using user by orientating them towards that article if they are interested in politics and by adding a sense of authority to the article (people are much more likely to belief what you say about someone if you stick a photo of them next to were you say it). For a non image-using user there isn't a real alternative to this image. The facts of the article they still get from the text. The user will probably either already know what the US president looks like, or are blind. Indeed once an image-using user has started reading the article the image has done its job, and is somewhere between a functional image (which should be given and ALTernative for non image-users) and a purely decorative image (which only has value for image-users). -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQA/AwUBOt1x1oFpv9f1Mr0YEQLv0QCgifeuPSXyLgEK6rimRuAe7WKHM3QAoPeD i38BJrCWZePxoCSOzGXEZ5+I =qQqq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2001 06:50:47 UTC