As a screen reader user I do not like long Alt tags.  Alt tags appear
in-line and have to be read through whether you want to or not.  Often,
especially when skimming, you simply do not want details about what a
diagram is.  It is a much better practice to use D links in such
cases.  These are links to long descriptions that any user can pop up for a
description.  Although HTML supports a longdesc tag that is supposed to do
the same thing, it is not currently supported by mainstream browsers.

John

At 11:34 AM 2/11/2003 -0500, Alan Cantor wrote:
>The alt text appears as a tooltip. Tooltips are controlled globally; they
>are not browser-specific. Tooltips are exposed by hovering the mouse over
>objects, such as the Start button and System tray icons.
>
>You can adjust the appearance of tooltips, including font, font size,
>background colour, text colour, etc. in the Appearance tab of the Display
>applet in the Control Panel, but I know no way to adjust how long the
>tooltip shows before blinking out of existence. Perhaps there is a
>registry hack to change this...
>
>You might try making tooltips more conspicuous. The default font is almost
>illegible. I set tooltips to 12 point boldface, rather than 8 point
>skinny. Because they are more obvious, I read them faster. (It takes time
>to crane one's neck and squint at the screen!)
>
>However, if people are commenting favourably about the alt text, have you
>considered incorporating the text into the web pages as regular content?
>
>Alan
>
>Alan Cantor
>Project Manager
>Strategic e-Government Implementation
>e-Government, OCCS
>416-212-1152
>[log in to unmask]
>
> >>> "Marcus Ormerod" <[log in to unmask]> 02/11/03 03:17am >>>
>Hi all
>
>
>sorry to ask what might be an unsolvable question. I am creating a large
>website with many diagrams. The diagrams have complete text descriptions as
>alt tags. Visually the alt text appears only briefly on screen and I know
>that screen reading software will read the entire content, however, a few
>people who are involved in the development of the site have commented that
>visually they would like to be able to read the content before it
>disappears. Has anyone found a way to stop the visual aspect of alt text
>disappearing too quickly? I assume it is controlled by the browser software,
>but I cannot find a button in internet explorer that controls this feature.
>
>regards
>marcus

John Gardner
Professor and Director, Science Access Project
Department of Physics
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-6507
tel: (541) 737 3278
FAX: (541) 737 1683
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://dots.physics.orst.edu