You make a good point Jean.  The purpose of DERBY-1842 is to ensure
that our graphic files adhere to the U.S. Federal Government
guidelines for accessiblility.
I updated the alt text for the graphic files because it was too vague.
What I needed was someone familiar with the subject matter to review
the text.  That review can be performed in IE by hovering the mouse
over the graphic and reading the text.
In the course of asking for this review some other issues came to light.
1. We should not be using this hover over method to test for
accessibility. We should install screen readers and test the text that
way.
2. Not all browsers support the hover over method of viewing the text.

For us to claim that the documentation is accessible, the graphic
files need to contain hidden text that screen readers can read.  The
appearance of the text when the mouse hovers over the graphic is
irrelevant from an accessibility standpoint. So if the line feed
characters cause the text to appear disjointed in the textbox that is
not important.  It doen't look very good for those of us who can see
the text, but we are not the target audience for this "alternative"
text.

BTW - thanks for the links :-)

Laura

On 1/24/07, Jean T. Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jean T. Anderson wrote:
> Hi, Laura,
>
> I'm trying to understand the accessibility issues that DERBY-1842 wants
> to address.  After a quick search I found the "Section 508" web site for
> the U.S. govt, which looks like it has great links to all sorts of
> resources:
>
> http://www.section508.gov/
>

browsing links from the section508 site, I found the w3c Content
Accessibility Guidelines:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

this may have already been mentioned on derby-dev. If so, my apologies,

 -jean



--
Laura Stewart

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