WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: definition list or data table

for

From: Catherine Roy
Date: Dec 15, 2012 9:10AM

Thank you Ryan and John for your responses. Last question regarding this
matter. The work my friend is doing about which I am inquiring will
eventually be a book, in which there will be several complex images,
that he wishes to make available in various formats (HTML, PDF, EPUB).
He has asked how he can apply long descriptions to these other formats
(PDF and EPUB).

Although I have had good training on PDF accessibility, I would hardly
call myself an expert and I have not done it in a while but if I recall
correctly, PDF does not support long descriptions per se (although I did
find this request : http://pdf.editme.com/pdfua-32000-longdesc but have
no idea how old this is since there is no date - grrr).

As for EPUB, I am only marginally familiar with this format but my
research indicates that while there is no support at the moment for out
of band descriptions, the aria-describedby attribute can be used to link
an image to a description in the same file. Is this correct ?

My friend will not go for having a long description on the same "page"
so there is not point in suggesting that. The only thing I can think of
is having an annexe at the end of the document where he could include
all complex image descriptions and use whatever mecanism each format
offers to link each image to its long description.

But perhaps there are other solutions I am not aware of for these 2
formats ? Guidance on this issue would be much appreciated.

Thanks,


Catherine

--
Catherine Roy
http://www.catherine-roy.net