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Thread: Proper way to markup citations and detailed image alt text?

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From: Dean Hamack
Date: Thu, Jan 15 2009 12:25PM
Subject: Proper way to markup citations and detailed image alt text?
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I'm currently writing an online article that includes citations and pie
charts. Looking for some input on how to mark them up properly.

If you go to Wikipedia's site, you will often times see a statistic quoted
and a numbered link after it. If you click on the numbered link, it jumps to
a numbered citation in the footer via an anchor link. Is that acceptable?
Seems like it might be a bit confusing to a screenreader user to me.

And let's say you have a pie chart which shows percentages of something. I
can easily create text that says "x=20%, y=50%, etc." but it seems like it
might be a little long for an alt tag.

Dean Hamack
Lead Web Developer
Bushido Designs
Tel:(206)523-6705
www.bushidodesigns.net

From: Chris Hoffman
Date: Thu, Jan 15 2009 11:55PM
Subject: Re: Proper way to markup citations and detailed image alt text?
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From: Moore, Michael
Date: Fri, Jan 16 2009 9:25AM
Subject: Re: Proper way to markup citations and detailed image alttext?
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On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Dean Hamack < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:

> And let's say you have a pie chart which shows percentages of
something. I
> can easily create text that says "x=20%, y=50%, etc." but it seems
like it
> might be a little long for an alt tag.

Dean wrote

Why not have an accompanying paragraph that describes the data in the
chart? It would be useful to all users, would fulfill the requirement
of alternative text, and would make the contents of the chart
indexable by search engines.

Mike's suggestion

I like to present the data from graphs in tabular form. The tables are
accessible and also provide the data in an alternative format that may
be more useful to many people. You can either link from the graph to the
table on a separate page or present the table immediately before or
after the graph. The alt text for the graph can be fairly simple at
that point. "Pie chart depicting racial distribution of consumers"

Mike

From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Fri, Jan 16 2009 9:35AM
Subject: Re: Proper way to markup citations and detailed image alttext?
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On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Dean Hamack < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
And let's say you have a pie chart which shows percentages of something. I can easily create text that says "x=20%, y=50%, etc." but it seems like it might be a little long for an alt tag.
Chris Hoffman < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > replied:

Why not have an accompanying paragraph that describes the data in the chart? It would be useful to all users, would fulfill the requirement of alternative text, and would make the contents of the chart indexable by search engines.

Cliff adds:

Dean, I realize that your pie chart is probably a theoretical example, but before you decide a pie chart is the best visual presentation of the data, you might check out any one of Edward Tufte's fine books at http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi. Among them, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is likely to come closest to hitting the mark. His forum, http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1, is a great place to read expansions on this approach and includes at least one thread on pie charts: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00018S&;topic_id=1&topic=Ask+E.T.

I mention this because so often the most significant barrier to accessibility is that the content is not usable in the first place, and so often the most significant barrier to usability is a failure to communicate clearly. The most accessible Web pages work well at all three levels.

Cliff Tyllick
Web development coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

From: John Middleton
Date: Fri, Jan 16 2009 11:20AM
Subject: Re: Proper way to markup citations and detailed image alttext?
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While this reference is a bit dated (2001) you may get some ideas for
alt text images and chart graphics for greater accessibility.

This HTML document has a lot of graphics and charts.
<http://www.researchutilization.org/matrix/resources/survey2001/4_disabilityareas.html>;

Regards,
John Middleton
Web Administrator
SEDL
Disability Research to Practice
http://www.ncddr.org
http://www.researchutilization.org

Cliff Tyllick wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Dean Hamack < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> And let's say you have a pie chart which shows percentages of something. I can easily create text that says "x=20%, y=50%, etc." but it seems like it might be a little long for an alt tag.
> Chris Hoffman < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > replied:
>
> Why not have an accompanying paragraph that describes the data in the chart? It would be useful to all users, would fulfill the requirement of alternative text, and would make the contents of the chart indexable by search engines.
>
> Cliff adds:
>
> Dean, I realize that your pie chart is probably a theoretical example, but before you decide a pie chart is the best visual presentation of the data, you might check out any one of Edward Tufte's fine books at http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi. Among them, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is likely to come closest to hitting the mark. His forum, http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1, is a great place to read expansions on this approach and includes at least one thread on pie charts: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00018S&;topic_id=1&topic=Ask+E.T.
>
> I mention this because so often the most significant barrier to accessibility is that the content is not usable in the first place, and so often the most significant barrier to usability is a failure to communicate clearly. The most accessible Web pages work well at all three levels.
>
> Cliff Tyllick
> Web development coordinator
> Agency Communications Division
> Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
> 512-239-4516
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>

From: Dean Hamack
Date: Fri, Jan 16 2009 12:15PM
Subject: Re: Proper way to markup citations and detailed image alttext?
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Thanks for all of the suggestions on the chart data folks. In this case, I
think I'm going to elaborate on each of the percentages and restate it, so
the image will be purely decorative.

But what about the issue of citations? I need to have little numbers next to
facts that jump to their sources via anchor links. Any ideas on the best way
to do that?

Dean Hamack
Lead Web Developer
Bushido Designs
Tel:(206)523-6705
www.bushidodesigns.net

From: Patrick Burke
Date: Fri, Jan 16 2009 12:30PM
Subject: Re: Proper way to markup citations and detailed image alttext?
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At 11:07 AM 1/16/2009, Dean Hamack wrote:
>But what about the issue of citations? I need to have little numbers next to
>facts that jump to their sources via anchor links. Any ideas on the best way
>to do that?
>
>Dean Hamack

As a screen reader user, I think the Wikipedia method is fine. As
long as you have a reverse anchor back to the original point in the text.

A separate Footnotes page (with anchors pointing directly to the
relevant note) might be a little bit handier.

Patrick
--
Patrick J. Burke

Coordinator
UCLA Disabilities &
Computing Program

Phone: 310 206-6004
E-mail: burke <at> ucla. edu