Why should sighted people not be allowed to appreciate art online?
Sighted people should be allowed to appreciate art online...and maybe
not in the same way, but people with a disability should be able to
appreciate them too.
Some people think that images are bad for accessibility. The truth is
that they can be of great benefit to the accessibility of a web page by
providing illustrations, icons, animations, or other visual cues that
aid comprehension for sighted individuals. Too often we forget that
when we design for people with disabilities, we are not designing only
for the blind. We must consider all disabilities types. Images can be
especially useful to individuals with certain reading disabilities,
learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, or cognitive
disabilities. The thing to remember with images is to make them
accessible.
The single most important thing you can do to make a web page
accessible is to include alternative text for images with alt
attributes.
An alt attribute is used to specify alternative text. It is used to
replace an image. That means that it serves the same function as the
image.
Users of screenreaders, language translation applications, text
browsers, or some hand-held devices cannot directly access pictures and
other graphics. Similarly, some users choose to turn picture loading
off- especially those with slower dial-in connections. These users rely
on alt attributes. When you make the decision to add alternative text,
you include the many people who use talking browsers, screen readers,
text browsers or browsers on small devices.
Besides the alt attribute you have a few more tools at your disposal
for images...title and longdesc attributes. A couple of things to keep
in mind about these attributes are:
First, in degree of descriptiveness title is in between alt and
longdesc. It adds useful information and can add flavor.
Second, the longdesc attribute points to the URL of a full description
of an image. If the information contained in an image is important to
the meaning of the page (i.e. some important content would be lost if
the image was removed like in online art), a longer description than
the "alt" attribute can reasonably display should be used. It can
provide for rich, expressive documentation of a visual image. It should
be used when alt and title are insufficient to embody the visual
qualities of an image. As Joe Clark states in his book [1], "A longdesc
is a long description of an image...The aim is to use any length of
description necessary to impart the details of the graphic. It would
not be remiss to hope that a long description conjures an image - the
image - in the mind's eye, an analogy that holds true even for the
totally blind."
Laura
[1] Clark, Joe. Building Accessible Websites, New Riders Publishing,
2002.
___________________________________________
Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN, U.S.A. 55812-3009
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
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