- From: Joe Clark <joeclark@joeclark.org>
- Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 22:26:35 -0400
- To: WAI-IG <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, uvip-web-test@yahoogroups.com
Fahrner Image Replacement, named after Todd Fahrner (but apparently invented by C.Z. Robertson), is a standards-compliant technique that uses stylesheets to provide a visible image, usually of nicely-typeset words, that is backed up by marked-up plain text. All the hip kids are using it. <http://www.stopdesign.com/articles/css/replace-text/> <http://rtnl.org.uk/words/19990709-site_updates.shtml> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2003JanMar/0870.html> Back in March, I had people try FIR in Window-Eyes and Home Page Reader, and two of the test pages at <http://www.stopdesign.com/log/default.asp?date=20030314> read correctly. I suppose it is a problem that all three did not. There is, however, the problem that screen readers are yoked to visual browsers and inherit their stylesheet interpretations. {display: none} really means {display: none}, and the treatment of visibility: hidden is unclear. The result? One correspondent, using HPR on his machine, says that text marked up as FIR disappears completely because it isn't an img element with alt; also, {display: none} takes it out of the reading order altogether. You can test this on my new, all-CSS page for Ten Years Ago in _Spy_, fixed up by Matt Mullenweg: <http://www.fawny.org/spy/?FIR> <http://photomatt.net/p722> WHAT I NEED: I need people to throw every screen reader they've got at that simple page <http://www.fawny.org/spy/?FIR> and see if you can read the text embedded in graphics. There are two separate blocks, and I'm not gonna tell you what they say-- the purpose is to see if you can read them. Use all screen readers you have, *especially Jaws*, though I doubt anyone from Freedom Scientific would bother looking into this. Report back to me and I will summarize to the lists. If this technique is really not working, then the most advanced standards-compliant sites designed by the most conscientious people at work today have a serious problem-- one of the problems they were going very much out of their way to avoid. -- Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/> Author, _Building Accessible Websites_ <http://joeclark.org/book/>
Received on Monday, 14 July 2003 22:25:42 UTC