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Re: Question about image in the alt attribute

for

From: Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez
Date: Aug 1, 2014 11:28AM

Hi!

You may find interesting the research work carried out by Lisa Tang:
Producing Informative Text Alternatives for Images (
http://ecommons.usask.ca/handle/10388/ETD-2012-09-657), which served the
ground for this ISO TS:
http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumberY423

Also, here you have another document that might be of help:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html-alt-techniques/

I am doing an extensive review on current best practices (according to
international bodies - including W3C -, scholars and web accessiblity
experts) on how to create appropriate text alternatives for images for my
PhD work. Once I will have clear conclusions, I promise to share them with
you, should anyone be interested :-)

Best

Silvia


On 1 August 2014 17:39, Whitney Quesenbery < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> I've argued for plain language in regulations and guidelines for years. We
> even asked Ginny Redish to do a webinar on plain language and laws for the
> 508 Refresh Committee. (It's probably still archived somewhere, but if
> you're interested, either check out her book Letting Go of the Words -
> www.redish.net, or plainlanguage.gov.)
>
> It's not enough for a group of people in a room to decide what something
> means. To make standards and regulations easy to follow, they must be
> written in clear language.
>
> I urge everyone working on any sort of committee to not only have a subject
> matter expert as editor, but also someone skilled in plain language
> (preferably someone who is not a "combatant.")
>
> Whitney
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 9:36 PM, Chagnon | PubCom < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>
> > Olaf wrote:
> > "This is one of the areas where WCAG needs fixing - accessibility is not
> > about disabilities of user agents. "
> >
> > Correct. It's about people and people will use whatever technology they
> can
> > to meet their needs.
> >
> > One of the biggest problems with WCAG is how it's written and organized
> on
> > the website. It needs a good team of professional technical writers and
> > editors to rewrite the gobbily-gook that's there now, and a team of
> > professional designers create a comprehendible website.
> >
> > Example: "Decoration, Formatting, Invisible: If non-text content is pure
> > decoration, is used only for visual formatting, or is not presented to
> > users, then it is implemented in a way that it can be ignored by
> assistive
> > technology." From WCAG guidelines at
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#text-equiv
> >
> > Just in yesterday's class, my clients (federal designers, web developers,
> > and editors) reviewed this guideline and came away more confused than
> when
> > they started. Here are some of their comments.
> >
> > "Pure decoration." Too ambiguous a term. Undefined. Nearly everything
> that
> > isn't text could end up classified as "pure decoration."
> >
> > "Used only for visual formatting." No one could figure out what the WCAG
> > authors meant by this. It's hard to imagine how graphics could be used
> for
> > visual formatting. It's equally hard to know what is meant by visual
> > formatting because even text is visually formatted. That's how
> publications
> > & websites are put together! The only ideas the class could come up with
> > are rules (or outlines, borders) and background tints that are often
> placed
> > around sidebars and other types of "boxed" information to separate them
> > visually from the rest of the page.
> >
> > "Or is not presented to users." This phrase was the most confusing. Which
> > users are they talking about? Sighted, low-vision, or blind users? And
> how
> > could a graphic (or non-text element) that's on a webpage or in a
> document
> > not be presented? If it's in the document, how could it not be there?
> (That
> > comment was by an editor.) What do they mean by this term?
> >
> > If we want to educate people about accessibility and mandate that it be
> > done, then we have to give people reasonable tools, directions,
> standards,
> > guidelines, etc. so that it the tasks and objectives are understandable
> and
> > doable. What we have now on the W3C website is an incomprehensible,
> > disorganized, confusing mess.
> >
> > There is one good, readable section on the site: the POUR section
> > http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/. Kudos to the authors for adding
> > this
> > big-picture concept to WCAG. I use it all the time in my classes when
> > teaching accessible documents to federal employees. It gets the message
> > across succinctly. We need more of this.
> >
> > -Bevi Chagnon
> > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - -
> > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> > www.PubCom.com - Trainers, Consultants, Designers, Developers.
> > Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
> > Accessibility.
> > Taka a Sec. 508 Class in 2014 - www.Pubcom.com/classes
> >
> >
> > > > > > > >
> > > >


*Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez*
Doctoral Assistant
Multilingual Information Processing Department (TIM), FTI/UNIGE
http://www.issco.unige.ch/en/staff/rodriguez/