[thelist] accessible imagemaps

Rickards, Julian (NDM) julian.rickards at ontario.ca
Tue Aug 29 12:16:11 CDT 2006


What? Stop showing off your knowledge and understanding of the
separation of structure from style? If that is what your boss is telling
you, then s/he needs to be educated.

Yes, using innovative CSS techniques could appear to be showing off but
it enables us to create better designs without messing up the HTML
document with presentational and/or decorative code/objects.

In the example I showed you, the image was simply decoration and the
same links could have been presented a differently but an image map-like
method seemed to fit. Other types of image maps may be more difficult
but it appears, from your description, you have been able to achieve a
similar result from CSS techniques.

Yes, it would appear that the silent majority voted in favour of this
approach.

-----Original Message-----

Julian,
I kinda went with your approach (although I already did it at the
weekend).
I used a background image and positioned the links on top. Actually,
they're even held in a UL, and they're text links with PHARK image
replacements.
Just to add a little controversy: I've read the WAI checklist before I
wrote to the list, and it only condemns server-side imagemaps. Mentioned
CSIMs with alt tags are ok. Lynx is ok with them, too. 

But I'm not ok with them. 

I find it annoying when someone comes back with this great idea of using
a picture of a photo shoot and activating areas for a web page.
All I was wondering was if there are well WAI educated voices out there
that would say "instead of using background images, lists and absolute
positioning, stop showing off and use an imagemap and alt tags".

But nobody said that. So I feel encouraged by the silent majority. :o)



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