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Re: Alt text or text equivalent for flowcharts, diagrams that have text in them

for

From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Nov 11, 2016 7:46PM

Whenever you can avoid lengthy Alt-text and keep the critical information as live, tagged text, the better the experience for everyone using AT.

This is an ideal case for using Adobe InDesign for the layout and design, and then exporting a compliant PDF from the layout.

All of the boxes, arrows, lines, and other visual doodads can be set to artifact within InDesign. Then, the remaining live text can be sequenced into a good Reading Order through InDesign's Articles and Layers panels.

We have more tricks and methods for this type of diagram but they're too lengthy here to describe. I'll be teaching an all-day InDesign workshop at the Accessing Higher Ground conference this coming week, but I don't think I'll have the chance to cover that during the session.

--Bevi Chagnon

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Bevi Chagnon | www.PubCom.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Anne Godlewski
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2016 3:56 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Alt text or text equivalent for flowcharts, diagrams that have text in them

Is there a suitable solution for PDFs in such situations? I have a page-long infographic of a decision tree, and it's all text boxes and images for lines and arrows.

Anne

On Nov 9, 2016, at 3:30 PM, Beranek, Nicholas wrote:

> Hi Jennifer,
>
> We came across this problem recently. The solution we came up with is similar to what JP described: hide the image and contents of the flow chart and provide an offscreen alternative.
>
> Here's the page in question:
>
> https://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/blog/annual-fee-worth-it/
>
> You'll notice that the flow chart itself is set to aria-hidden=true. The sibling of that <div> is another <div> positioned offscreen. It contains two <h3> and several <p> elements that explain what it is being conveyed visually in the graphics.
>
> I hope this helps!
>
> Nick Beranek
> Capital One
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Pope, Jennifer
> Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 3:08 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: [WebAIM] Alt text or text equivalent for flowcharts, diagrams
> that have text in them
>
> Hi,
>
> Could you give me some guidance on how to provide alt text or an appropriate text equivalent for flowchart or diagram images that already contain text? Do you have any examples of ones done well I could take a look at? I've tried looking it up but just wondering what your experiences have been. These would be for images we're using in an online course. Thanks!
>
>
>
> Jennifer Pope
> Program Accessibility & QA Specialist
> NU Online Experiential Learning
> Northeastern University
> 360 Huntington Ave, 31 BV
> Boston, MA 02115
> 617-373-6634
>
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