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Re: Graphical heading & Alt-text

for

From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Jul 16, 2013 7:46AM

Olaf wrote:
"- there are fields in some schemas that can serve as a source Alt text, but
for good reasons there is not the one and only Alt text metadata field; in
the world of news article and photos from news agencies, based on IPTC,
there are a few fields that are relevant here; one will contain a short
text, more like a title, another field will contain an extensive, even
narrative explanation of the image; then you have Dublin Core title or
description; that's already four fields."

Yes, they can be used for Alt-text, but they really are various forms of
captions. Captions aren't Alt-text and in many photos shouldn't be confused
as one and the same.

Large organizations, such as news media and government agencies with photo
libraries, have already assigned these fields to other specific tasks,
especially for dynamically-generated websites and mobile content as Olaf
described, so we can't go and "borrow" them for our purpose.

If you want to automate applying Alt-text to 100 photos in a publication (a
project we're automating for a client right now), here are the steps that
need to be done:

1) An editor writes Alt-text using software that reads and writes metadata.
He decides to use the "Description" field because there isn't a standardized
Alt-text field.

2) He gets to photo #50 and discovers that this photo has already used
"Description" for a caption and the caption isn't appropriate for Alt-text.
Since this photo is from a large photo database, he can't remove what's
already there and put in his own Alt-text because someone else in the
organization uses this field for a process (likely the web team for
automated population of photo captions). So he has to make a choice: either
he goes back and changes all the other Alt-texts to some other field, like
"Title", or he makes a note to tell the production designer not to use
"description" for photo #50, but instead use "Title."

3) As the editor goes through the photos, he finds a few more that already
use Description and Title for other purposes, so he has to use another field
for the Alt-text and remember to tell the production designer.

If you've ever worked on a large group project, you can sense that we're in
dangerous territory: something is going to get lost in the translation.

4) Move now to InDesign desktop publishing, and the designer is adding
Alt-text to the 100 photos in the layout. Click a photo, select
Object/Export Options, and select get Alt-Text from the metadata's
Description field. Click the next photo in the layout, select get Alt-text
from the metadata's Description field. And the next photo, and the next.

5) Wait: which photo did the editor say to use Title, not Description? Was
that #49? No, wait, wait, #62 uses ...which field for Alt-text? Where's
that email the editor sent!

I can automate the work in InDesign with a script that will find each photo
and get the Description field from the metadata. But what about photo #50?
The automated script is going to put in the wrong field for Alt-text, so by
hand the designer has to remember and change the Alt-text on #50. And the
editor has to check or proof that this was indeed done.

Without a standardized XMP metadata field for Alt-text (and Actual text),
this important task for accessibility is difficult to do.

Olaf's right, a designer or editor can make a custom XMP field for Alt-text,
and the InDesign user can pull from any XMP metadata field, but we're
talking about real-world editors and designers, and the majority I've worked
with and taught have mediocre computer skills. In fact, most designers are
computer-phobic. (Note, it's changing slowly as an older generation retires
and a younger more-computer-savvy generation takes over.)

If you want the process to fail, then tell designers they have to create
their own metadata field and populate it by hand.

If you want it to get done, then provide an easy-to-deploy way for them to
do so, a way that anyone will understand how to use.

Olaf wrote:
"one of the obstacles overall: everybody believes metadata (and actually
using them) should be cool and there should be a standard for it etc. - as
long as that standard is exactly what a given user thinks it should be;
there is very little readiness in the market to accept something that is a
standard but does not meet exactly a user's taste or preferences."

I don't consider metadata cool. Been using it for several decades of
programming and I think it's incredibly practical and useful, but not cool.
My new pair of boots are cool, but not metadata <grin>.

I can't think of better names for proposed standardized fields than
"Alt-Text" and "Actual Text." I think the only thing up for discussion is
whether "Alt" is capitalized or not, and whether it gets a hyphen or not. I
like to K.I.S. (Keep it simple).

Adobe should lead on this because they 1) created XMP, 2) create InDesign
and many other creative software programs that should be setting Alt-text,
and 3) create the export-to-PDF engines in these programs, as well as
Acrobat itself. They are the logical choice.

And I think the accessibility community should encourage Adobe (I'd like to
say push, but...) to do this throughout its entire line of tools. They are
the major player in publishing - graphic design, traditional publishing, web
publishing, web technologies and analytics, you name it.

Hopefully list member Andrew Kirkpatrick of Adobe can comment on this.

-Bevi Chagnon

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