WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Alt text / alternate image on embed (of QuicktimeVideo)

for

From: Roberts, Vern
Date: Apr 17, 2007 9:30AM

It's my understanding, in accessibility guidelines, when you're page
opens, do a check to see if the plugin exists and, if not, furnish a
link to the place where the plugin can be downloaded. EXAMPLE: for
javascript, use a hidden value that changes when the page loads, then do
a check of the new value. If it has not changed, javascript is probably
turned off, or possibly an older browser that doesn't do javascript. In
that case you would give instructions on how to enable javascript.

That being said, I'm not sure how to check for specific plugins.

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Sarah Horton
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 10:17 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Alt text / alternate image on embed (of
QuicktimeVideo)

--- Sam wrote:
Is there a way to specify either "alt" text or serve an image (with alt
text of course) if a user has not downloaded whatever plugin is required
to view / listen / whatever?
--- end of quote ---

Hi, Sam,
There might be better ways to accomplish this, but here's what I usually
do for Quicktime videos. I make a fallback movie (enclosed) and
reference it using the "src" attribute, and then reference the video
file using the "qtsrc" attribute. Here's the code - note that in this
case I reference a SMIL file, but you can reference a movie directly:

<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" width="410"
height="440" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
<param name="src" value="fallback.mov" /> <param name="type"
value="video/quicktime" /> <param name="qtsrc" value="mlk.smi" /> <param
name="autoplay" value="true" /> <param name="controller" value="true" />
<param name="bgcolor" value="white" /> <embed src="fallback.mov"
width="410" height="440" autoplay="true" controller="true"
pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" qtsrc="mlk.smi"
type="video/quicktime" bgcolor="white"></embed> </object>

Here's a web site that uses this approach:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~towardsfreedom/

I'd love to hear how others do this!

HTH,
Sarah

Sarah Horton
Academic Computing
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH USA 03755
www.dartmouth.edu/~shorton