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Alt Text & Universal Design
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Question: in the text we had to read from NCAM a repetitive advice shows up all the time: say it's a pie chart/ scatter plot/ Venn diagram, describe the axis (x/y). So my question is: do they know/care what exactly these are? A person who was blind the entire life really needs to know that the graphic is a scatter plot? Do these notions make sense for them?
Lucica: Good question. It's helpful two keep 2 things in mind.
1. Alt Text is used by a varied audience which includes people who are blind and have never had sight, people who have lost their vision, people who have low vision or other vision problems such as color blindness, people using mobile devices with images turned off, and people who prefer to learn from data and words instead of images.
2. Most adults who are blind and low vision have had some sight in their lives. In fact, the older the person, the more likely it is that they lost their vision rather than being blind from birth. And even people who have always been blind, become familiar with the terms and concepts of the visual world - since most of the people they know (families, classmates, colleagues, friends) are sighted.
the pie image: : the figure is a pie chart showing the results of the european parliament election in 2004. And then a table with thead: party and % and then in the tbody the lists of each party and their corresponding percents.
the wikipedia image: the image is a flow chart with 6 labeled boxes linked by arrows. One of the arrows is bi-directional. It describes the flow of adding articles to Wikipedia and it's resumes in the following lists:
1.Search wikipedia for a keyword
- forward to "Is it found?"
2. Is it found
- if it is found then forward to "Think of another term" then go back to "search the wikipedia"
- If the keyword was not found then forward to "Is there a related term"?
3. Is there a related term?
- if yes, forward to "create a redirect"
- if no, forward to Create a new article
the energy image: The picture represents an overview of the link between the energy income and the waste in human life.
It shows a man in the center with some arrows pointing towards him representing the income and some arrows pointing outside representing the waste. The flow is:
Arrows pointing in:
- he receives aliments: carbohydrates, fat and others
- he transforms aliments into energy
- the energy serves the body's metabolism
Arrows pointing out:
- the body then eliminates chemical waste : water and CO2
- the body looses heat
Lucica,
You are definitely getting the hang of it. To tighten-up your description, try reading it out loud to a friend and then showing them the image to see what they imaged and what they may have missed.
bg
First image:
A pie chart showing the results of the European Parliament Election in 2004 per the data in this table:
EPP 38%
PES 27%
Other 9%
ELDR 9%
EFA 6%
EUL 5%
UEN 4%
EDD 2%
If I knew what the abbreviations meant, I would spell those out.
Second image:
A flow chart explaining how (when) to add an article to Wikipedia.
1. Search Wikipedia
2. Is it found?
3. If yes, think of another term
a. Search again
4. If no, is there a related term?
a. If no, create a new article.
b. If yes, create a redirect.
Third image:
Basic Overview of Energy and Human Life.
Chemical Energy ingested:
• Carbohydrates
• Fats
• Others
ATP (adenosine triphosphate): – stores the body’s “energy currency”
Metabolism then converts the energy into:
• Chemical Waste:
o Carbon dioxide
o Water
• Heat
(I found this image to be hard to understand and I can see it! There must be further context for it to make sense.)
Note: I want indents in the lists but this webpage removes them. Hopefully, you get the idea.
On my invasive site, http://ipaw.org, I'm thinking that most of the images are not adding information to someone who cannot see them. Most of them are also described well in either a caption or in the text. There is a map here: http://ipaw.org/science/techlibraries.aspx but the information is all in the text so I think I should not have alt text at all.
Marsha,
Excellent. I suggest that on the third one you will want to add some description of the image of the man otherwise it's just data. For example some one with low vision might be able to see the image of the man but not read the text. So the description without any mention of the image might be confusing.
As for your invasive plant website I think that alt text could add value. For example, the first image of the buckthorn has a great caption with good information but it doesn't describe the image which shows a woman surrounded by dense growth of buckthorn, twiggy, ten foot tall sprouts covered with green leaves.
Whether or not that added description is necessary is up to you but it adds information that is not in the text and draws out the reason for the photo's inclusion in the web page.
As for the map, I agree that the list is sufficient and that the map can get a null alt (alt="")
bg
The image shows a pie chart with the results of the European Parliament election in 2004.
There is no further text explanation, so it is assumed the pie chart colors refer to the different political agendas. It is not clear whether the percentage is the distribution of seats within the parliament or the number of votes recieved.
The image presents the workflow for adding an article to wikipedia. Before adding an article, it is assumed you search for it first. The steps are connected through yes/no transitions.
1. Search Wikipedia
2. Is it found?
a. "Yes" forwards to the end state "Think of another term"
b. "No" forwards to "Is there a related term'"
3. Is there another term?
a. "Yes" forwards to the end state "Create a redirect"
b. "No" forwards to the end state "Crate an article"
If you find the article under the word you search for it, you can think of another term and search for it.
The image shows a basic overview of energy and human life. A man is displayed in the center, left hand a sample picture of what he consumes and right hand what he "expels" from it.
1. First we have consumption of chemical energy in form of carbohydrates, fats and others. This results in
a. Chemical waste of carbon dioxide and water
b. Heat
c. ATP
2. ATP is consumed in our metabolism which results in
a. Heat
Dennis,
Excellent - you are definitely applying the principles outlined in the guidelines.
Here are some specific comments that should help everyone.
As before, I recommend that you read your descriptions aloud to a colleague or have them read the descriptions without the image to make sure they are clear and make sense. Sometimes we make things more complex when striving for brevity.
For example, your Wikipedia outline might be too streamlined depending on the audience. A general audience might be thrown by a term like "end state."
On the energy image, the left-hand, right-hand placement of things is not necessarily important.
However the image of the food should be described, for example "...a picture of what he consumes including meat, fish, fruit and vegetables..."
I know this is the first time that you are all writing descriptions like this so please take my comments as constructive criticism and not negatively. I want there to be MORE high-quality image description out in the world and you are all doing a fantastic job at applying the lessons in this course.