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Re: High Volume Alt Text

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Feb 6, 2015 4:35PM

Yamanishi, Evan wrote:
>
> I'm looking for vendors to write alternative text for the images in all
> of our college products, and I thought the list might have some
> recommendations for reliable vendors for this sort of work. The goal is
> to have multiple options to spread out the work (one book can have
> >2000 images) and to ensure quality alt text for complex subjects since
> we offer books for everything from introductory biology to upper-level
> economics.

Hi Evan,

Have you investigated the Diagram Center? http://diagramcenter.org/

I might also suggest that a lot of the more complicated images in your books
will require both alternate texts as well longer textual descriptions.

Long-time subscribers to this list know that I have been a staunch proponent
of @longdesc, but the poor attribute has suffered from lack of love for many
years, and those browsers that do support it aren't the most user-friendly
for visual learners who could still benefit from the longer text
description. However, authoring plugins
(https://www.joedolson.com/2014/03/update-wp-accessibility-longdesc/) and
browser extensions
(https://thenewcircle.com/s/post/1627/teach_your_browser_new_tricks_dirk_gin
ader_video) provide some support to those who really need visual support for
@longdesc. (and ya, sorry if those links appear somewhat self-serving,
but...)

None-the-less, @longdesc is well supported by the majority of screen readers
& browsers (JAWS, NVDA, ORCA) although notably absent is any support from
Apple (Safari with VoiceOver), who steadfastly refuse to accept the need and
desire of content authors such as yourself to provide longer textual
descriptions via that attribute. They offer partial but often impractical
alternatives to @longdesc, many of which complete disregard visual design
and legacy development constraints, or propose features that are not yet
widely supported in other browsers or by other screen readers
(http://cookiecrook.com/longdesc/). If however you *do* have some design
latitude, you might want to check out the following as well:
http://test.cita.illinois.edu/aria/longdesc/longdesc2.php

Another thing you might also want to be aware of is the in-development work
of a new ARIA attribute, aria-describedat
(http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#aria-describedat), which will also take
a URL or IDREF value pointing to the longer description. The EPub folks are
pushing VERY hard for this as well, and while they hope to see it become
part of ARIA, they apparently are not opposed to going it alone for ePub if
that is required. See: http://idpf.org/forum/topic-770

Bottom line - while you may have to do some internal reflection on *HOW* to
surface longer textual descriptions for those students/users who need that
content, one thing is abundantly clear: those longer textual descriptions
(above and beyond alt text) are definitely required for complex images (of
which we see often in text-books, etc.).

HTH

JF