Technique H24: Providing text alternatives for the area elements of image maps

Applicability

HTML and XHTML Documents that contain area elements.

This technique relates to:

Description

The objective of this technique is to provide text alternatives that serve the same purpose as the selectable regions of an image map. An image map is an image divided into selectable regions defined by area elements. Each area is a link to another Web page or another part of the current Web page. The alt attribute of each area element serves the same purpose as the selectable area of the image.

Examples

Example 1

This example uses the alt attribute of the area element to provide text that describes the purpose of the image map areas.

<img src="welcome.gif" usemap="#map1" 
    alt="Areas in the library. Select an area for
more information on that area." /> 
<map id="map1" name="map1">
  <area shape="rect" coords="0,0,30,30"
    href="reference.html" alt="Reference" />
  <area shape="rect" coords="34,34,100,100"
    href="media.html" alt="Audio visual lab" />
</map>

Other sources

No endorsement implied.

Tests

Procedure

For each area element in an image map:

  1. Check that the area element has an alt attribute.
  2. Check that the text alternative specified by the alt attribute serves the same purpose as the part of image map image referenced by the area element of the imagemap.

Expected Results

  • The above checks are true.