[thelist] Tip o'the day (x2)

[rudy]

> i still don't agree that you have to do a text-only version...
>
> the whole point i've been championing all along is that if you
> build it right, you don't need a text version... the regular version
> is accessible and degrades well enough that it's not necessary...


hi john

seems like fifty messages ago but you wrote this only yesterday morning

here's a great article --

  Use of ALT texts in IMGs
  http://www.htmlhelp.com/feature/art3.htm

some excerpts --

    Some of the biggest "casualties" on the information dirt-track are
documents whose authors didn't take the
indexing robots seriously. Every step that you take towards text-mode
accessibility is, at the same time, a step towards being friendly
to those indexing robots, so (whether or not you care about
minority audiences such as the blind or users of text mode
terminals) I'd say it's in your own interest to keep text-mode
accessibility in mind.

  If your reader doesn't display [page decorations],
    then there is nothing
     that an alt text can usefully add to the topic of
     discourse, and there is little likelihood that a normal
     reader who is running in text mode will want to view or
     download such a decoration. So, code ALT="" in most
     cases. In the event that you are using one as a link
     anchor, be sure to include some text in the scope of the
     anchor too (it is good authoring style to make the
     significant text be the link, rather than some insignificant
     bullet or, so help me, "click here". Cautionary or
     interrogatory icons might be replaced by something like
     "[!]" or "[?]", and bullets with ALT="*" etc.


    In general I don't believe you need to [provide separate graphical and
     text-only pages], and those people who keep yelling "I can't afford
the time to make separate text mode versions of my pages" are just looking
for some excuse
     for their site being inaccessible to text mode users.

ALT="Large Yellow Bullet"
     So we get to read (or blind readers get to hear):
         Large Yellow Bullet Introduction
         Large Yellow Bullet The Problem
               Small Red Bullet Historical Analysis
               Small Red Bullet Current Situation
         Large Yellow Bullet The Solution
     (Yes, I have genuinely seen this kind of thing on the WWW, I am not
making this up. What were these
     authors thinking of?)

A final thought. When your paperback edition is published, does it include
an ALT text that tells the reader what
a cheapskate they are, and how they should have bought the hardback edition
with the eight extra illustrations,
and the handsome dustcover? I think not. Please don't address your
text-mode readers [3] as if they were
second class citizens, either.