Images and other Non-HTML Elements

Like video and other sorts of media, images and other non-HTML elements can cause a lot of challenges on your web page, and the wide variety of things makes it difficult to cover them in a training like this.

However, a good practice that will support accessibility for your web site is to make sure that your important interactions that take place within a non-HTML element are repeated in HTML on the page, or perhaps on another page.

For example, flash-based drag-and-drop functionality can be a very cool element to place on a web page, but like most interactions in Flash it’s a major problem for users who don’t interact with the page visually and also for users who don’t use a mouse.

Images are a special case, as the image tag includes an attribute called the “alt” tag, which stands for alternative text. This is used to provide a description of the image for users who can’t see the image.

Repeating the important information, and offering the same exercise or experience in a non-drag and drop way might be  a way to provide and equally effective, alternative access version of that content or experience. If that would be long and disruptive on the page, creating a link to another page that provides that accessible version is acceptable.

So, as you work on adding these sorts of more complex elements to your page, take some time to think about how users with various abilities will access that content, and make sure that you’re providing paths to the information and interactions you provide that everyone can enjoy.