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Re: Accessible Maps

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Feb 5, 2002 1:18PM

At 12:10 PM -0800 2/5/02, Kevin Price wrote:
>I am interested in what people are doing to make maps accessible to
>people with disabilities. We want to make a map of campus as
>accessible as possible. Does anyone have any examples of maps online
>that are more accessible to people with disabilities?

I just answered a question very similar to this in my web accessibility
class; my answer was roughly:

"You can't make maps accessible."

Of course that wasn't the full answer. The full answer is that you can
make the information contained in the map accessible -- you just have to
figure out what the map is trying to do, specifically, and figure out
a way to present that non-graphically.

That's not easy, mind you, but it's doable eventually. It may take a
lot of work and even custom programming on the server side, but it
can be done in most cases. It takes lots of describing and lots of deep
thinking.

So, for example, what's the purpose of the campus map? Start with that
question, on this -specific- campus map, and then go from there. How
will this information be used?

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett < <EMAIL REMOVED> > http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire http://kynn.com/resume
Next Book: Teach Yourself CSS in 24 http://cssin24hours.com


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