Some things to play with (multimedia illustration)

This is a rough playing space for my ideas on illustrating concepts, as a way of understanding how to provide better information about it in the Web Content Accessibiltiy Guidelines. Feedback should be sent to the WCAG working group's mailing list. Please look at the archives for relevant threads.

This page was last updated at $Date: 2002/07/11 00:04:58 $ to include new images and Charles McCathieNevile produced it and may or may not have time to maintain it.

Some illustrations for WCAG 2.0 checkpoint 3.4 (from the draft of 31 July 2001)

Note that if you are using Internet Explorer it seems not to support HTML 4 (according to user feedback), so I am still working on ways to make this page work properly for browsers that do and work better for that browser.

Comments on these are welcome - please add them to the existing thread on these illustrations. I intend to update them, at the very least to include metadata pointing to the different alternative forms. But I don't know when.

So the checkpoint itself (as drawn from the 14 August draft version) might appear something like:

Checkpoint 3.4 Supplement text with non-text content.

another illustration:

Success criteria

Note to reviewers: This item is under discussion and does not have consensus. We do not have something acceptable for the draft at this time. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Refer to the issues list for more information.

Definitions (informative)

Non-text content includes images, text in raster images, image map regions, animations (e.g., animated GIFs), applets and programmatic objects, ascii art, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, graphical buttons, sounds (played with or without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video. Note to reviewers: this definition is under discussion. Suggestions are welcome.

Benefits (informative)

Sounds, graphics, videos and animations can help make concepts presented in a Web site easier to understand, especially for people with cognitive, reading, or learning disabilities or those who are unfamiliar with the language of the text of the site.

"Designers need to be cautious in deciding when to use illustrations. Reading a picture is probably a learned activity that is easier for some than others. Some users skip the pictures; others read only the pictures. Designers must also recognize that visual conventions are not universal and that individuals develop their own mental schema and expectations in interpreting visual information.
For a detailed discussion of guidelines pertaining to illustrations, consult Tufte (1983) and MacDonald-Ross (1977)." Robert W. Bailey, Ph.D., Human Performance Engineering, 3rd edition.] pg 431.

Examples (informative)

Example 0: This checkpoint, as presented here.
Example 1: a description of a process.
A page describes how to learn to snowboard. Each step in learning how to turn on the snowboard is illustrated with a photograph of a person doing what is described in the text.
Example 2: a concrete concept.
The primary concept on a page is concrete. It is discussing Mt. St. Helens. It includes both a description of the 1981 eruption as well as photos of the eruption and the aftermath. It links to another site that contains video and another site that contains a 3D simulation of what happened underneath the crust and within the volcano during the eruption.
Example 3: child's report of school trip.
A child went with her school on a trip to a soda pop bottling plant. She wrote a report for her family and friends to post to the Web. In the report, she includes the company logo as well as a picture of a soda pop bottle, which has a unique shape. She links to the company Web site for more information. She includes photos she took of the plant.
Example 4: stock trading data.
A news site is comparing the performance of the economy from 3rd quarter of this year with 3rd quarter from the last 3 years. They compare prices of the most popular stocks. They present the data in a bar graph with a link to the raw data they used to create the bar graph.
Example 5: history of Jazz.
A grandfather's hobby is listening and playing to Jazz. He creates a Web site discussing the major players from the 1940's and the styles they were creating. When describing key pieces of work, he links to a short sound clip from each song.

The text equivalents to these image and sound files:

There are examples in different media of the proposed checkpoint 3.4 in the 31 July draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. One is a pair of images:

Some things to play with