- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 18:58:47 +0200
- To: Brandon Bowersox <brandon@ojctech.com>
- Cc: Joe Clark <joeclark@joeclark.org>, WAI-IG <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
I think problem 4 - the case of low-vision users, is the one where this technique is really problematic. And not for people with seriously low vision, who use a zoom of 10x on a screen magnifier, but the large number of people with moderately poor eyesite who take off their glasses (because they give you a sore nose) and enlarge the text 50% or 150%. In cases like Joe's example, the problem is barely evident - browsers can enlarge the image as well as the text - but they can't reflow images. This holds true for text in SVG as well, until version 1.2 which includes reflowing text. But heavily used this technique can make life somewhat frustrating - putting 15% of the text outside the window is enough to really slow down reading, and requires people to start manipulating the browser a lot. Combine it with a motor disability (even a minor one) and you have a problem at the level of reducing efficiency and concentration for a lot of people. I think the long-term solution is to use smarter things than HTML - SVG 1.2 is not yet the accepted standard for SVG, but it is getting market acceptance and does provide more possibilities for solving the problem. In the short term, this is the sort of case where an alternate "clean" version can be readily generated automatically (change or disable the document stylesheet) on client or server side, if the user knows to do it. Which leaves the disabled user needing to learn more than others to make the same technology work - not something unusual, but not ideal. Of course, we don't live in an ideal world... just some thoughts. Chaals PS iCab makes a mess of reading the example, that is apparently due to bugs in its CSS implementation. Without the floating it might get it right. On Tuesday, Jul 15, 2003, at 17:09 Europe/Zurich, Brandon Bowersox wrote: > Thanks for organizing this testing--I look forward to the results and > the possibility that designers can use images to control the display > of text without hindering accessibility. > > One question--it seems there are 4 main problems with the age-old > method of using images to display text: > 1) The text will only be accessible if the designer includes useful > ALT text within the IMG tag. > 2) Even so, text inside an IMG ALT tag is not indexed by search > engines and not searchable by users with a browser's Find feature. > 3) Adding ALT text is not sufficient for AREAs inside a client-side > imageMAP (redundant text should be added > http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#client-side-redundant-text) > 4) Images with ALT text are not legible for low-vision users because > the text is not crisp as it scales larger (even with the fancy zooming > Opera does). > > -- Charles McCathieNevile Fundación Sidar charles@sidar.org http://www.sidar.org
Received on Tuesday, 15 July 2003 12:59:19 UTC