Re: Marking image-maps

Do you consider this a usability issue (something that makes it easier for 
people) or an disability access issue (without this feature people with 
disabilities would not have access to the content)?

Jon

At 08:03 AM 2/21/2001 -0500, Rob & Toni Seiler wrote:
>Re: [The User Agent Accessibiity Guidelines group at W3C are presently
>discussing
>whether there needs to be a way of highlighting that a particular image is an
>imagemap.]
>
>I'm sure it helps if images that are hot are marked. I don't like having to
>drive the mouse over sundry bits of graphical eye candy to see which ones
>are links (eg by watching the status line). And I'm sure someone less
>dexterous with a mouse finds it even more inconvenient. Touchscreens are
>even less revealing as there is really no "mouse over event". A good image
>map eg used as a menu, probably can convey its role and segmentation by
>graphic design.
>
>The marking as follows using the "title" parameter works well enough with
>MSIE (haven't checked with other browsers) although the alt content only
>shows if images are turned off or are missing.
>
><map name="themap">
><area coords="0, 0,200, 50" href="goto1.htm" title="Open page 1"/>
><area coords="0,51,200,100" href="goto2.htm" title="Open page 2"/>
></map>
><img src="elr3_mo.gif" width="200" height="100" alt="The image"
>usemap="#themap" title="Image map"/>
>
>
>Best regards,
>Rob Seiler
>... Web: http://www.elr.com.au
>... e-mail: seiler@elr.com.au

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
MC-574
College of Applied Life Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street, Champaign, IL  61820

Voice: (217) 244-5870
Fax: (217) 333-0248

E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu

WWW: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
WWW: http://www.w3.org/wai/ua

Received on Wednesday, 21 February 2001 11:41:05 UTC