Re: Help requested on accessibility of SVG

On Monday, July 28, 2003, 8:09:55 AM, Jim wrote:


JL> Hi,

JL> I'm trying to make SVG versions of the existing GIF "valid FOO" badges, but
JL> I'm having a very hard time making them usefully accessible.

JL> http://jibbering.com/2003/7/valid4.01.opt.svg

JL> is my current best effort,

It seems reasonable. My first test was to select HTML and then
continue to select 4.01 which is logically the same text flow, and it
worked, so you win in my estimation.

JL> (although putting the W3C and the HTML 4.01 in
JL> the same text element could be done easily

It could, but does it make sense? Is it one continuous text, or two
isolated pieces?

JL> ) my aims are this:

JL> The text in the document says "Valid W3C HTML 4.01" and it can be
JL> selected and copied as a complete phrase, and it looks pretty much
JL> like the existing badges.

Except better; nice drop shadow.

JL> I didn't think this should be too hard,
JL> however I can't find a way to do it.

JL> The problem is that because the tick denoting validity has to come
JL> above the text, it has to go and the end of document (standard
JL> z-index problem) I can fool simple accessibility agents by using
JL> the USE method in the above document, however these simple AT's
JL> are pretty useless (if an author uses USE or TREF or similar to
JL> repeat content the AT which doesn't understand will get things
JL> wrong)

I think the root of your problem is conflating the alternative text
(Valid W3C HTML 4.01) the displayed text (W3C  HTML 4.01) - this is
easier to see if you consider the long description, for example (this
icon denotes that the HTML content that links to this icon is valid to
the SGML DTD defined in the W3C HTML 4.01 specification).

So, the tick is not, really, semantically equivalent to the word
'valid'.

It could also be argued that making text display as a symbol (or as
nothing, which is also possible) is in itself inaccessible.

JL>  So I'd really need a longer term solution - however even
JL> using USE, I can't achieve what I want since I can't have USE a
JL> child of TEXT to keep the text grouped in a single text so as to
JL> be selectable as a whole. (TREF is no good here, because that
JL> doesn't understand ALTGLYPH to take my tick replacement font for
JL> the text)

JL> Can someone please help me make this simple graphic accessible?

JL> (I could add some EARL RDF in a METADATA element, but I know of no
JL> way of saying "the document which is displaying this badge is
JL> valid HTML 4.01" - but I could say a specific url was, mind you
JL> the number of EARL consuming UA's is even fewer than the number of
JL> SVG AT's.)

I agree that would be valuable, but leave the question of an
indirectly specified referent to the RDF folks.

JL> Jim.

Other, non-accessibility comments:

Read the license for Bitstream Vera. You can use the glyphs, but you
can't call them Bitstream Vera anymore so please edit the font-family
attribute.

You do not need to use altglyph to get a W3 ligature.

If you put the path of the C on a path child of glyph (or indeed the
path of W3) instead of on the glyph element directly, you can give it
a color and create a multicolor logo without resorting to altglyph.
Its arguable whether this is better or worse in this case; I just
wanted to be sure that you (and others reading this) are aware that
ligatures, in general, do not need to be wrapped in explicit markup.


-- 
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Monday, 28 July 2003 16:18:54 UTC