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Re: alt text

for

From: Poore-Pariseau, Cindy
Date: Jun 27, 2013 11:49AM


I'm with disability services and I'm trying my hardest . . . . :)


" Sometimes it is better to be kind than right" Amy Grant
Cindy Poore-Pariseau, Ph. D.
Bristol Community College
Coordinator of Disability Services
Office of Disability Services, L115
Fall River, MA 02720
phone: 508-678-2811 ext. 2470
Fax: 508-730-3297
aim: poorepariseau




-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of <EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2013 1:45 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] alt text

Cindy wrote:

> following is a link to the image I am trying to get ITS to add alt
> text to, but am told this cannot be done because it is being loaded
> onto a CMS

What they are telling you didn't have that much meaning in and of itself. Most content management systems can add alternative text to most images, even if it's not always trivial for end-users to do so. Could you get the name of the product for us?

> Given the purpose of the image, it is essential that a screen reader be able to read the image.

Indeed! And because this image is mostly text, the text should be CSS-styled *text*, not an image. The W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines say that no text except for logos should be encoded as images, and that's not even complicated styling on that text. The office of disability services, of all places, should be trying to be WCAG conformant. Is there any way you can get them to agree to make that text appear on the page as text, and put up the icon bar below and the QR code as separate images?

Deborah Kaplan
Accessibility Team Co-Lead
Dreamwidth Studios