Pushing back on marketing department: text / images, adverts
How do you mark up advertisements from marketing departments?
I often receive skyscraper banners with text included (a couple of headlines, images, 20 word paragraphs and some small terms and conditions)...
I'm looking at a long term solution at the moment but would be keen to know how you mark up your adverts? Do you just bite the bullet and go with an image with the best, succinct offer text? (I can't do this due to advertising regulations).
Keen to hear others experiences...
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This could be one time when visually impaired people are more than willing to accept a non-equivalent experience 
Web Developer at Big Lottery Fund
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We would need to see where these adverts go in your pages. If the same ad appears in different contexts, avoiding images would provide great flexibility. You can layer and clip <img> elements, with enough experimentation.
Sounds like each could start with a heading element, then use paragraph element for each paragraph. CSS could style and position the text in a few standard ways, providing some flexibility for different amounts of text.
Often, adverts vary their text size to fit the space on the page. CSS3 proposes some features to do that but they aren't widely supported. So you may need to liaise with marketing about copy lengths and limiting the variety they can introduce.
These restrictions make the brand more consistent and recognisable, same as any brand guidelines.
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| jpb wrote: |
| This could be one time when visually impaired people are more than willing to accept a non-equivalent experience |
Thanks for the reply
Unfortunately, that's not something I can take to my legal and risk departments!
I'm guessing I'm not the first to come against this hurdle. I'd be very keen to hear how others approach the use of banner ads on their online estate whilst remaining accessible.
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| Ben Millard wrote: |
| We would need to see where these adverts go in your pages. If the same ad appears in different contexts, avoiding images would provide great flexibility. You can layer and clip <img> elements, with enough experimentation... |
Thanks Ben.
I can't upload an image at the moment due to firewall restrictions, but I will upload an example this evening.
I work in financial services, so our adverts often go through a massive sign off process. If text sizes and positioning change ever so slightly there is a hoo-hah. Until now these types of images are delivered in jpegs, with huge huge alt text.
I've come into the role and I'm hoping to get a lot of the accessibility issues ironed out. I need to find a way (or at least get consultancy with people in similar situations) on how to move forward.
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Here's the example
It's a classic banner advertisement for the web. Marketing have been using this style for years, and deliver it for implimentation as an image.
In this example I've knocked up a test liek so: set width, set height, anchor text in the heading level, which is blocked out with 400px bottom padding, decorative images as bg, apr as definition list absolutely positioned from bottom, terms absolutely positioned from bottom.
Ideally I'd like to work with marketing to construct a suite of acceptable presentations and work within those guidelines. Afterall, the majority should be a heading, terms, link, bg image...
Some of these can be really text heavy and visually complex. I'm keen to hear how you would approach these, especially if you received many to implement each day...
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In the end I put display block on the anchor of the heading level, gave it a padding bottom of 300px, positioned the small terms text and DL for APR absolutely from the bottom, and made the decorative image a background image.
Can't upload an example quite at the moment, but what do you think?
Only downside is the anchor text for the heading level is quite long.
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There is no such thing as an "alt tag" and the syntax <alt> is invalid HTML.
CMCP, that's quite an elegant solution. Doesn't sound super robust against browser text resizing controls, though.
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