Screen Readers and Complex Graphics?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Patricia Blount wondered: <<I am struggling to write "Alt-Text"  
descriptions for complex graphics that go beyond "Graphic of product  
architecture" so that visually impaired people using screen readers  
will get more than "Oh, here's a graphic and another one..." I know  
Alt-Text should describe the graphic's function or purpose and not  
merely what it looks like. But actually writing such text is proving  
to be very challenging. We're limited to a field about 50 characters  
in length and some of our graphics are highly detailed.>>

What you're looking for is the "long description" option, which links  
to a plain old HTML file that can be as detailed as you'd like. I  
have this as a standard option in Dreamweaver that appears whenever I  
insert a graphic. See, for instance, section 7.2 of the following  
page: <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/>

However, it's not clear how well this feature is supported across  
browsers; see, for instance, <http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/images/ 
_IMG_LONGDESC.html>

That being the case, a simple solution that should work everywhere  
would be to include a standard hyperlink such as the following below  
each graphic: "Detailed description of the key parts of the [name of  
graphic]."
I included the "name of graphic" part because in any kind of link- 
rich page, I imagine it must be extremely frustrating to have your  
screen reader call out dozens of poorly described links. Adding a  
name, as in "details of the network architecture graphic", makes the  
meaning clearer.

And one word of advice: test these descriptions by reading them to  
someone sitting beside you with their eyes closed. If they can't  
picture what you're describing, the description needs more work. A  
visually impaired reader would be a better tester, and will probably  
be better at building the required images in their mind, but if you  
don't have access to such testers, pretending to be one will at least  
give you some empathy for the nature of the challenge and will  
improve your results.

>

----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
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