A long description of website graphics is important for accessibility

Long descriptions describe website graphics, to EVERYONE

What is a long description?

Are descriptions important?

Company web sites can get visitors with varying visual disabilities and using many different web browsers. Descriptions of the graphics used in a good website design, help people with disabilities to understand what the pictures, logos, seals and other non-text content is meant to convey to the visitor. Although each image is required to have an alt text attribute to validate, an alt text description is limited to 80 characters. The longdesc= attribute in html, allow you to provide a link to a complete description. A complex picture might require a much longer written description to convey all the important information that the picture represents to people with good eyesight. Designing an accessible website, requires the web designer to fully describe in written words, exactly what each picture represents. Graphics are of absolutely no search engine value, without simple words to describe them. To a good search engine, a descriptive sentence is worth a thousand pictures!

When accessible features are built into web pages, websites are more convenient and more available to everyone — including users with disabilities. Web designers can follow techniques developed by private and government organizations to make even complex web pages usable by everyone, including people with disabilities.

U.S. Justice Department — Civil Rights Division

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The long description of each website graphic

Each of the following graphics appears somewhere on our site. Although you may only encounter them once, having a good description is important, if you need clarification of what they are for or why they are on the web page. Descriptions are important for the web and the more focused and descriptive words on a web page, make it a good, descriptive web page.

Our web graphic, followed by it's long description:

The Keyhole symbol

The long description:

This symbol was chosen by the National Center for Accessible Media in a design competition, to best represent and portray to sighted web site visitors, that the website could also be accessed and navigated by visitors with disabilities. The official long description is: A globe, marked with a grid, tilts at an angle. A keyhole is cut into its surface. This long description is very important to anyone who can't see the actual picture. Since they may only access sites that display it.

SEO Website Designers Logo

The long description:

A dark blue square surrounded by a gold border with centered, white, bold letters S, E, O above the word Design. This symbol was chosen to represent both who we are and what we do.

ICRA Label

The long description:

A horizontal rectangle with a stylized globe containing a vertical letter i, followed by the letters I, C, R, A. This symbol represents a child friendly content website. Any violation of the use of this label on a website with adult only content, should be reported to the Internet Content Rating Association.

Valid CSS

The long description:

A horizontal rectangle containing W3C follow by the letters C, S, S followed by a check mark. This symbol indicates that the stylesheets used on this site have been validated by W3C to conform to established guidelines.

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The International Webmasters Association

The long description:

A gold bordered oval with the words International Webmasters Association surrounding the letters I, W, A. A second oval below contains the word, member.

Anti-spamming logo

The long description:

A horizontal rectangle containing a symbol, a circle with a diagonal line across it over a waste paper basket and an envelop partially visible. The circle is followed by the words: PROMOTE RESPONSIBLE NET COMMERCE followed by the words: Help stamp out spamming. Many forms of spam are published on or distributed via the web. Reducing this volume, could save all of us many hours of wasted effort. Webpages that contain useless or strictly self-promotional information can also be described as spam.

W3C WAI AA WCAG

The long description:

A horizontal rectangle similar to all W3C labels. This label contains all the letters in the title, W3C AND W, C, A, G.

Valid XHTML 1.0

The long description:

A horizontal rectangle containing the text: W3C followed by the letters: XHTML, followed by the number: 1.0, followed by a check mark. This label and the link it sends the user to, are verification that the page containing the label is written correctly, using proper code. The Validation page states, To show your readers that you have taken the care to create an inter operable Web page, you may display this icon on any page that validates. Most of the pages on our website are valid xhtml 1.0 Strict documents.

Cynthia Tested

The long description:

A horizontal rectangle containing the text: Cynthia tested. The symbol and the link associated with it, shows the visitor that the webpage has been checked for accessibility compliance.

ICRA Associate Member

The long description:

A vertical blue rectangle containing the text: Associate Member and the association logo.

Validome

The long description:

A horizontal grey rectangle containing the text: Validome XHTML 1.0. This validator provides enhanced validation services, including XML and google site map validation.

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ICRAChecked Label

The long description:

A circle with the letters I.C.R.A, the Internet Content Rating Association logo and a check mark. The symbol of a properly labeled site that is automatically verifiable in the ICRA database.

FOSI Label

The long description:

A horizontal rectangle containing the words fosi.org and associate member.

Good net guide approved Label

The long description:

A black horizontal rectangle with a blue background and yellow check mark with the words Reviewed and approved by Good Net Guide.

Why is a text description important?

Long descriptions should be a concise, accurate text summary of the graphic. A brief explanation of the importance or historical meaning of a picture can help users to put the graphic into proper context. There are many reasons that visitors may not be able to see any pictures on your web site. Beyond partial or total vision impairment, some users may set their web browser to not download any pictures. This is becoming common practice for some mobile users. Since search engines are totally blind visitors and also use text descriptions to determine web page content, good descriptions in alt text and long descriptions, will help to improve your ranking position on every search engine results page. Good descriptions written in a web standards compliant format, will allow EVERYONE to READ all the information on your site. That's being user friendly and that's important on the world wide web!

For assistance in accessing our site and to provide comments/suggestions regarding our site accessibility features, please feel free to contact us. We truly appreciate your comments.

Read an interesting long description about the history of the web?

Want to read a description of an award winning website?

Should you find our descriptions information useful and wish to link directly to this web page, simply copy and paste the following link text onto any of your site's pages:

<a href="http://www.seowebsitesdesigners.com/accessible_web_pages/description.html">How to find a description</a>

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