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RE: alt text in 2 languages?

for

From: julian.rickards@ndm.gov.on.ca
Date: Apr 21, 2004 9:04AM

The simple answer is that although you can specify the language in the <img>
tag, lang="it", you can't specify two languages in the image tag and most
certainly, you can't specify a change of language in the alt attribute so
therefore, alt must be in one language, whatever you specify for the
document or specifically in the <img> tag.

I wonder however, if (despite the additional effort) you might create an
image map from the image and specify an alt for the two areas with different
lang attributes. From what I read at
http://blooberry.com/indexdot/html/tagpages/a/area.htm, the <area> tag is
not required to use the href attribute so you don't have to create two links
and the <area> tag does allow the lang attribute. So therefore, if your
image in question is a link, you could use:

<a href="some-page.html"><img src="some-image.gif" width="xx" height="xx"
alt="English text" usemap="#italian-alt" lang="en"></a>

<map name="italian-alt">
<area shape="default" lang="it" alt="Italian text">
</map>

---------------------------------------------------------
Julian Rickards
Digital Publications Distribution Coordinator
Publications Services Section
Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines
Phone: (705) 670-5608
Fax: (705) 670-5690


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrizia Bertini [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 11:46 AM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: alt text in 2 languages?
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have a doubt: how shall I threat an Alt text which is half
> in Italian
> and half in English?
>
> The case is the following: a company has it's name in Italian (is a
> short sentence) and its payoff is instead in english. So
> inserting the
> Alt my doubt was: how can i do the best thing to ensure the best
> accessibility? I guess the span lang attribute doesn't work
> properly in
> this case, eventuaally with an xml language declaration? anyone has
> already faced and fixed this matter?
>
> Thx:)
>
> Pat
>
> Ps. it'd be too easy to change the Alt, the Custumer absolutely wants
> to keep both the name and company payoff in some images and i have to
> find out the most suitable solution to combine two langiuages
> in an alt
> attribute.
>
>
> ----
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