I educate a category over on the native faculty right here in Lengthy Seaside and a majority of the content material is hosted on the Canvas LMS so college students can entry it on-line. And, naturally, I would like the content material to be as accessible as attainable, so thank goodness Canvas has a11y tooling constructed proper into it.
Nevertheless it ain’t all that rosy. It makes assumptions like all different a11y tooling and adheres to tips that had been programmed into it. It’s not just like the WCAG is baked proper in and up to date when it updates.
The rationale that is even on my thoughts is that Jeremy yesterday described his love for writing picture descriptions:
I get pleasure from writing alt textual content. I just lately described how I up to date my posting interface right here alone web site to place a textarea for alt textual content entrance and centre for my notes with images. Since then I’ve been having fun with the inventive problem of writing helpful—but additionally evocative—alt textual content.
I purchase into that! Writing alt textual content is a problem that requires a fragile dance between the technical and the inventive. It’s each a possibility to make content material extra accessible and improve the person expertise.
A kind of programmed tips within the Canvas instrument is a cap of 120 characters on alt textual content. Why 120? I dunno, I couldn’t discover any supporting guideline or rule for that precise quantity. One reply is that display readers cease asserting textual content after 125 characters, however that’s apparently unfaithful, at the very least at this time. The final recommendation for a way lengthy alt textual content ought to be is available in various levels:
Jake Archibald talks of size when it comes to emotion. Element is nice, however an excessive amount of element may distort the point of interest, which makes whole sense.Dave sees them as quick, succinct paragraphs.Carrie Fisher suggests a 150-character restrict not as a result of display readers will truncate them however extra as a psychological observe that perhaps issues are getting too descriptive.Daniel Göransson says in this 2017 information that it comes right down to context and understanding when sure particulars of a picture are price further rationalization. However he usually errs on the facet of conciseness.
So, how lengthy ought to alt textual content be? The final consensus right here is that there isn’t a onerous restrict, however extra of a contextual consciousness of what objective the picture serves and adapting to it accordingly.
Which will get me again to Jeremy’s article. He was writing alt textual content for a gaggle of speaker headshots and realized the textual content was all beginning to sound the identical. He paused, thought in regards to the expertise, in contrast it to the expertise of a sighted person, and created parity between them:
The extra audio system had been added to the line-up, the extra I felt like I used to be repeating myself with the alt textual content. […] The expertise of a sighted particular person taking a look at a web page filled with audio system is that after some time the photographs form of mix collectively. So if the alt textual content additionally begins to sound a bit repetitive after some time, perhaps that’s not such a foul factor. A display reader person can be getting an equal expertise.
I dig that. So if you happen to’re searching for a tough and quick rule on character counts, sorry to disappoint. Like so many different issues, context is king and that’s the kind of factor that may’t be codified, and even automated for that matter.
And whereas we’re on the subject, simply seen that Twitter has UI to show alt textual content:
Now if solely there was extra distinction between that textual content and the background… a11y is difficult.
Simply How Lengthy Ought to Alt Textual content Be? initially printed on CSS-Tips. You need to get the e-newsletter.
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