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Re: LongDesc for documents, not websites

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Apr 20, 2011 9:48AM


I like to keep the image and the document close together for people with
learning or cognitive disabilities so that it is right there for visual
reference. The image doesn't have to be large, just a reminder of which
image they needed the details for.

Sometimes moving back and forth loses your concentration especially in a
complex image heavy document.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Angela French
Sent: April-20-11 11:03 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] LongDesc for documents, not websites

Bev -
I would be inclined to put the long description at the back of the document
as you described but without duplicating the graphic again. If the first
appearance of the graphic has a Figure number, then I would just put the
figure number at the end similar to a footnote. I would also put a link
from the foot note back to the graphic to make returning to the place left
off easier. Any reason why you feel the graphic must appear again?

Angela French





link to the back where the detailed narrative is located.

Example:
Main body of the document <Figure>
Pie chart shows growth of x-y during 2010. <live link to the back page>Text
description of this chart is at the end of this document.

There are two significant drawbacks to this method:

1) It's very time consuming and impractical to construct this, especially
given the immense number of revisions that a government document goes
through before it is finalized. The live text links will eventually get out
of whack during the normal editing and revision process.

2) In these graphic-intensive documents, it could easily add a hundred or
more pages to the document because the graphics will appear twice, once in
the main body of the text and again in the back section with the detailed
description.

Any suggestions? Remember, these are Word and PDF documents, not websites.
Thanks in advance for your words of wisdom!

--Bevi Chagnon

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