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Links inside alt-text in PDF?

for

From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Jul 1, 2013 9:40AM

Hi Bevi,

at least for PDF the Alt (alternate text) attribute is just a string, which implies you have neither structuring inside it, nor formatting, nor links.

This makes it quite clear that ideally an Alt entry would just contain one concise piece of text, not several paragraphs or even more as such a long Alt entry probably often would be difficult to handle. Nevertheless, specifics always depend on the context.

In HTML longdesc might come the rescue, as AFAICT it can be a web page on its own. Personally I prefer if any relevant content is always there for everyone. If there is useful information in an extended alternate description, it might be relevant for non-disabled users, and it has to be asked why such information is not contained in the regular content/text anyway. If it's there right away for everyone then much less additional work needs to be done to meet accessibility requirements (especially in this electronic age we live in). Interestingly HTML longdesc seems to have a kind of 'mixed' history, so maybe it is not an ideal solution for the problem it is trying to solve.

Olaf


On 1 Jul 2013, at 17:24, Chagnon | PubCom wrote:

> One question: As far as I know, we can't yet put hyperlinks in Alt-text and
> I haven't checked that particular issue lately. Has anything changed that
> allows us to do that?