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Re: WCAG

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From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Mar 2, 2010 11:54AM

On 02/03/2010 17:42, Jared Smith wrote:
> WCAG 2.0 uses "short text alternative" and "long description"
> extensively in the techniques documents, but as far as I know, they
> never define either term. I'm unfamiliar with an exact character value
> defined or recommended in WCAG 2.0, but I distinctly remember that at
> one point the suggestion was "around 100 characters". This is, of
> course, a rough guideline - certainly some images should have alt
> values that are longer than 100 characters, but I think this is a good
> point at which you should seriously consider either making the alt
> text more shorter or providing a longer description.

I took the vague "short" and "long" terminology to be more about common
sense. They don't explicitly define what is long or short, as it's
heavily dependent on language (compare the amount of info that, say, 100
chars in japanese can convey vs german).

(Although in 1.4.8, they do explictly mention char counts with regards
to line length, which i still don't quite agree with as it seems
arbitrary: "Width is no more than 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK).")

I got the impression from the thread starter that it was more about an
absolute maximum in terms of "in HTML, using ALT attribute, before it
causes problems in specific browsers / with specific AT", which is
dependent on the tech.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke