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Thread: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
Number of posts in this thread: 11 (In chronological order)
From: indamockwood-l
Date: Fri, Apr 27 2007 2:10PM
Subject: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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Hi all,
We've been talking about using Tag Clouds in some of our work (here's an example: http://del.icio.us/tag/). We've been seeing a lot more tag clouds recently, and I wonder how it's possible for them to be accessible, especially in a screen reader. How could you go about differentiating such a list of links? Are header tags appropriate(I wouldn't think so)? I already know that del.icio.us conveys meaning in color, which is a no-no.
Has anyone tried to make accessible tag clouds before, or is it just not possible?
Marissa
From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Fri, Apr 27 2007 2:20PM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We've been talking about using Tag Clouds in some of our work (here's an example: http://del.icio.us/tag/). We've been seeing a lot more tag clouds recently, and I wonder how it's possible for them to be accessible, especially in a screen reader. How could you go about differentiating such a list of links? Are header tags appropriate(I wouldn't think so)? I already know that del.icio.us conveys meaning in color, which is a no-no.
>
> Has anyone tried to make accessible tag clouds before, or is it just not possible?
This article on 24ways may be of interest:
http://24ways.org/2006/marking-up-a-tag-cloud
Personally, I did a little experiment recently with marking up a tag
cloud as a table and then heavily styling that table to then appear as
an inline list with different class assignment for the size of each
link...so in markup, the actual value (number of entries with that tag)
would be explicitly present, but visually it'd still be presented in the
familiar size relationship. All was going well, until I tried to get it
to play nice in IE. Even in IE7, it just doesn't seem to be possible to
get a table to display as anything other than a table - despite oodles
of display:inline (on the table itself, the thead, the tbody, the
individuals rows and even the individual cells themselves), IE still
wants to show it as a table...only way around seems to be absolute
positioning, which would not work well for obvious reasons. *sigh*
P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Fri, Apr 27 2007 2:30PM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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Philip Kiff wrote:
> I haven't used tag clouds myself, but at a superficial glance, the
> del.icio.us usage in your example seems accessible enough to me: they offer
> the option of sorting the list alphabetically (default) or "by size". If
> you sort the list of tags by size, then a non-visual user agent will be able
> to extract the same information that is currently conveyed by size/colour to
> other users.
I'd argue that, even when sorted by size, a non-visual user agent only
conveys the order, and not the actual relative relationship. For
instance, if we had
apples (10) oranges (15) bananas (400) coconuts (10)
in the visual way, the link for bananas would be considerably larger
than the others by quite a large factor. Just putting that list in order
bananas oranges apples coconuts
indicates the relative order, yes, but the fact that bananas were just
so overwhelmingly more tagged than the others, and that apples and
coconuts are on par, is lost.
Sorry, got carried away with my fruit paradigm there :)
P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
From: Philip Kiff
Date: Fri, Apr 27 2007 2:40PM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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Patrick wrote:
> Philip Kiff wrote:
>
>> I haven't used tag clouds myself, but at a superficial glance, the
>> del.icio.us usage in your example seems accessible enough to me:
>> they offer the option of sorting the list alphabetically (default)
>> or "by size". If you sort the list of tags by size, then a
>> non-visual user agent will be able to extract the same information
>> that is currently conveyed by size/colour to other users.
>
> I'd argue that, even when sorted by size, a non-visual user agent only
> conveys the order, and not the actual relative relationship. For
> instance, if we had
>
> apples (10) oranges (15) bananas (400) coconuts (10)
>
> in the visual way, the link for bananas would be considerably larger
> than the others by quite a large factor. Just putting that list in
> order
>
> bananas oranges apples coconuts
>
> indicates the relative order, yes, but the fact that bananas were just
> so overwhelmingly more tagged than the others, and that apples and
> coconuts are on par, is lost.
Mmmm...yes, I can see that now. And the 24ways article you point to gets at
the same kind of thing. Without some added number or data column, those
relative relationships will indeed be lost.
Phil.
From: Philip Kiff
Date: Fri, Apr 27 2007 2:50PM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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Marissa wrote on 27 April 2007 16:00 EDT:
> We've been talking about using Tag Clouds in some of our work (here's
> an example: http://del.icio.us/tag/).[....] Has anyone tried to make
> accessible tag clouds before, or is it just not possible?
I haven't used tag clouds myself, but at a superficial glance, the
del.icio.us usage in your example seems accessible enough to me: they offer
the option of sorting the list alphabetically (default) or "by size". If
you sort the list of tags by size, then a non-visual user agent will be able
to extract the same information that is currently conveyed by size/colour to
other users. Perhaps the tag list should be marked up as a list, rather
than a series of anchor hrefs, but in general, the information provided by
the tag cloud is still available to non-visual and/or colour-blind users.
Phil.
From: mike.osborne
Date: Fri, Apr 27 2007 5:10PM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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I think the notion of accurately reperesenting the relative relationships
is going beyond the function and purpose of a tag cloud. A tag cloud is a
very inexact device - based on popularity - but does provide a browsable
directory of items with an "at a glance" feature for selecting more
popular tags on the premise that the user will be more likely to be
interested in a more popular tag. Just how much more popular a tag is over
another is somewhat irrelevant in my opinion - the point is to find a tag
that catches your interest and then go to its page. A tag cloud is less a
content item and more a navigational device.
In my opinion the del.icio.us is pretty accessible since they provide the
sort by size option. The only information a visual browser user gets that
a screen reader user doesn't get is when a size "step" has changed - but
does this really matter?
I'd also suggest that a screen reader user could get fairly tired of
hearing the repetitive "photos are tagged with". In fact the numbers could
well become a distraction "seven hundred and twenty-three photos are
tagged with" and so on. The example used Flickr tags - but on del.icio.us
(or other social bookmarking sites) the numbers could regularly be in the
hundreds or thousands if not higher. You'd probably then need to factor
that down to some sort of scale e.g. 1 to 100 to deal with cumbersome
numbers - but then some bright spark will argue that doesn't represent
actual numbers properly - and so on - until the tag cloud omelette has
been well and truly over-egged.
If we think about the mobility impaired for a moment - I'd suggest they
find it more difficult to click on the smaller tags. So, when del.icio.us
shows us the list in descending "size" i.e. popularity we don't really
need the links to become smaller (although it's a nice metaphor and visual
reminder) - perhaps the ratio of sizes could be reduced to provide a more
uniform clickable area without losing the visual cue completely.
Mike
> Patrick wrote:
>> Philip Kiff wrote:
>>
>>> I haven't used tag clouds myself, but at a superficial glance, the
>>> del.icio.us usage in your example seems accessible enough to me:
>>> they offer the option of sorting the list alphabetically (default)
>>> or "by size". If you sort the list of tags by size, then a
>>> non-visual user agent will be able to extract the same information
>>> that is currently conveyed by size/colour to other users.
>>
>> I'd argue that, even when sorted by size, a non-visual user agent only
>> conveys the order, and not the actual relative relationship. For
>> instance, if we had
>>
>> apples (10) oranges (15) bananas (400) coconuts (10)
>>
>> in the visual way, the link for bananas would be considerably larger
>> than the others by quite a large factor. Just putting that list in
>> order
>>
>> bananas oranges apples coconuts
>>
>> indicates the relative order, yes, but the fact that bananas were just
>> so overwhelmingly more tagged than the others, and that apples and
>> coconuts are on par, is lost.
>
> Mmmm...yes, I can see that now. And the 24ways article you point to gets
> at
> the same kind of thing. Without some added number or data column, those
> relative relationships will indeed be lost.
>
> Phil.
>
>
From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Fri, Apr 27 2007 5:20PM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = wrote:
> I think the notion of accurately reperesenting the relative relationships
> is going beyond the function and purpose of a tag cloud. A tag cloud is a
> very inexact device - based on popularity - but does provide a browsable
> directory of items with an "at a glance" feature for selecting more
> popular tags on the premise that the user will be more likely to be
> interested in a more popular tag. Just how much more popular a tag is over
> another is somewhat irrelevant in my opinion - the point is to find a tag
> that catches your interest and then go to its page. A tag cloud is less a
> content item and more a navigational device.
No offence, but I think the key phrase here is "in my opinion".
> In my opinion the del.icio.us is pretty accessible since they provide the
> sort by size option. The only information a visual browser user gets that
> a screen reader user doesn't get is when a size "step" has changed - but
> does this really matter?
If it doesn't matter, why have it for visual users? I still say that
information gets lost for non-visual users.
> I'd also suggest that a screen reader user could get fairly tired of
> hearing the repetitive "photos are tagged with".
That's not related to the issue of providing the "step size" information
non-visually. I'm certainly in agreement that prefixing all links with
"photos tagged with..." is a bad idea.
> The example used Flickr tags - but on del.icio.us
> (or other social bookmarking sites) the numbers could regularly be in the
> hundreds or thousands if not higher. You'd probably then need to factor
> that down to some sort of scale e.g. 1 to 100 to deal with cumbersome
> numbers - but then some bright spark will argue that doesn't represent
> actual numbers properly
This bright spark here would say that no, if the visual display is also
submitted to a scaling factor (which of course it is), then as long as
the same type of scaling factor is also applied for non-visual
information that's fine (though for non-visual users, a small note that
figures they may read/hear are normalised to provide comparison only,
and are not reflective of actual number of items tagged, may be necessary).
> If we think about the mobility impaired for a moment - I'd suggest they
> find it more difficult to click on the smaller tags. So, when del.icio.us
> shows us the list in descending "size" i.e. popularity we don't really
> need the links to become smaller (although it's a nice metaphor and visual
> reminder) - perhaps the ratio of sizes could be reduced to provide a more
> uniform clickable area without losing the visual cue completely.
Again, completely agree.
P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
From: Charge D Wise
Date: Sat, Apr 28 2007 8:00AM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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Lots of visual elements don't "really matter" they are simply eye candy. The
option to sort by size seems to me to comparable for the vision impaired but
I think sort by popularity would be the better term and agree that clickable
size needs to be considered as well.
Cheryl D Wise
MS MVP FrontPage
http://by-expression.com
http://starttoweb.com
Foundations of Microsoft Expression Web: The Basics and Beyond
From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Sat, Apr 28 2007 9:40AM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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Charge D Wise wrote:
> Lots of visual elements don't "really matter" they are simply eye candy.
True, but in this case the relative size differences do convey
information beyond simple order of popularity...
P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
From: Emma Duke-Williams
Date: Sun, Apr 29 2007 10:10AM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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On 28/04/07, Patrick H. Lauke < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Charge D Wise wrote:
> > Lots of visual elements don't "really matter" they are simply eye candy.
>
> True, but in this case the relative size differences do convey
> information beyond simple order of popularity...
>
In part, I think that it depends on how it's done. I saw one tag cloud
(I've forgotten where, sorry) recently, where it had the number of
hits in brackets after the link. It seemed that everything from 1-100
was the same size, the next size 101-200 etc.
So, though there was some value from the link size, there was also a
lot more from the actual numbers.
Someone has already mentioned that the smaller links could be
difficult for someone with fine motor skills difficulties, I guess
another factor is going to be how well they scale for someone who
relies on font enlargement, rather than a screen reader - and also
whether or not the size differentials are confusing for someone with
dyslexia.
--
Blog: http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/
From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Sun, Apr 29 2007 10:30AM
Subject: Re: Are Tag Clouds Accessible
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Emma Duke-Williams wrote:
> In part, I think that it depends on how it's done. I saw one tag cloud
> (I've forgotten where, sorry) recently, where it had the number of
> hits in brackets after the link. It seemed that everything from 1-100
> was the same size, the next size 101-200 etc.
> So, though there was some value from the link size, there was also a
> lot more from the actual numbers.
Of course in those situations I'd completely agree that having something
like a "sort by popularity" option would be more than sufficient. The
main point of the discussion so far has been (from what I inferred,
anyway) about links that do NOT show numbers (visually, or in markup)
P
--
Patrick H. Lauke