RE: Overly Verbose Alt Tags

Hi Patrick,

The section I referred to (animal feeding and interpretation:
http://natzoo.si.edu/hilights/animaldemos/index.htm) contains a large
amount of information about feeding times and interpretive activities - the
catch is that this information is all provided as GIFs (img1.gif &
img3.gif) with no alt text or other means of getting to the information
except visually!

Andrew
_________________________________
Dr Andrew Arch
Manager, Internet Product Development
Vision Australia Foundation
Ph 613 9864 9222; Fax 613 9864 9210
Mobile 0438 755 565
http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/

Member, Education & Outreach Working Group,
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/




                                                                                          
                    Patrick Burke                                                         
                    <burke@ucla.e        To:     Andrew.Arch@visionaustralia.org.au       
                    du>                  cc:     w3c-wai-ig@w3.org                        
                                         Subject:     RE: Overly Verbose Alt Tags         
                    16/08/01                                                              
                    17:17                                                                 
                                                                                          
                                                                                          




At 07:08 PM 8/15/01 , Andrew.Arch@visionaustralia.org.au wrote:
>
>I think the designer might have been colour blind <grin> ... but did any
of
>you go to the "animal feeding and interpretation" section? I won't spoil
>the surprise, but let you visit the page <frown>!
>
>Andrew

Hmmm, with Jaws I didn't notice anything too unusual.  There must be
strange
visual things going on?

For the record, as a person with blindness  (non-darkness-impaired reader,
etc.) & screen reader user, I did not know that the bullets were actually
blue
until others pointed it out. I was warning people about the red ones
because
there are so many of them. I think it's a highpoint of Web comedy that they
are
in fact blue.

For the record, the Jaws "Link List" command (or similar command in other
screen readers) let's one navigate easily through the links without the
red/blue bullets (although it does not help with the "This is a large
navigation button that goes to ..." problem (I paraphrase")).

In defense of the National Zoo, I found their questionnaire / feedback form
to
be very accessible. So we can send our requests for improved ALT tagging
fairly
easily (though it is tempting to preserve the site as part of a Menagerie
of
Poor Design Practice).

Patrick

Received on Thursday, 16 August 2001 03:29:22 UTC