- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 14:58:38 -0700
- To: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>, "Leonard R. Kasday" <kasday@acm.org>, Anne Pemberton <apembert@crosslink.net>, "Poehlman, David" <David.Poehlman@usmint.treas.gov>, "'Kynn Bartlett'" <kynn@idyllmtn.com>, Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org, WAI ER group <w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org>, WAI UA group <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>
At 12:01 PM 9/27/00 -0700, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>However, it is important to recognize that HTML + CSS is _not_ a workable
>general replacement for images as text.
Nor is "image as text" a workable replacement for "text as text". At some
point in the so-called "design process" that text that became "image-text"
was actual "text - text". Just as the PDF text or table was once not a
"scanned-type" of text. The proportion of today's text that is not at some
point in its career in digital (dare I even say it "ascii") form is
miniscule. I don't know why "image text" is any different than any other
image in requiring a text equivalent? In short I think this is already
covered early in the guidelines.
Let me repeat "image-text is in fact image". The fact that it's an image of
text is of no consequence, it's still "image" - full stop. The image of a
book cover with the author's name in some supposedly artistic font is an
image, not text. The author's name need not even be in the alt-text if the
designer doesn't think it's important to serve as a replacement for the
image of the book cover. The designer need not explain that "the eerie
mysticism of the illustration has been enhanced by the selection of a font
that..." That's up to the designer. If she can suffer the belief that the
proper replacement text for the missing image is "book cover" then so be
it. If semantics is involved we are in another venue.
--
Love.
ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
Received on Wednesday, 27 September 2000 18:00:19 UTC