Photo galleries
I'm new to web accessibility. I found out about it first by helping to create e-books (including HTML versions) via pgdp.net. Now I'm involved in maintaining the website for my church.
Recently a question arose on what to do with the pictures. So far we've been storing them on the website, and I've been adding the alt-text describing the images briefly. The other option is to switch to storing the images on a site like Picasa or Flickr. How accessible are those sites? I've been trying to determine whether I'll be able to control alt-text; and based on my poking around so far, there's a lot of javascript on those sites, which I'm not sure how well the screenreaders handle...
Or does it even matter? I mean would someone with visual impairment look in the photo gallery section?
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Hi, welcome to the forum 
Here's a review of the accessibility of Flickr from 2009. Not great - not sure if it's improved since then.
It's always a tough decision, whether to use third party product which you have little or no control over in terms of accessibility.
Worth noting that visual impairments come in many forms, it's not just blind people. And accessibility covers more than that anyway - you'll see from the review above that it also covers dexterity, learning disabilities etc. So whilst a completely blind person may be less interested in your gallery, there may well be people with other disabilities who are - for example, someone with limited dexterity who has to use a keyboard instead of a mouse.
That said, a photo gallery is one of the 'softer' elements to a website, and I would be inclined to concentrate my efforts on ensuring the main site itself is as accessible as possible first.
And if you provide details for anyone to contact you if they encounter any problems, you'll be able to respond to any real-life issues.
James Coltham - Local gov web manager by day, web and accessibility blogger at lunchtime, freelancer by night. Tweets at @prettysimple.
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In my opinion, since the photo gallery is not a big deal in your site you can use the third part sites like Flickr for your photos for those interested.
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If you're working with Joomla you can always use the RokGallery plug-in from Rockettheme.
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| terrysp wrote: |
| In my opinion, since the photo gallery is not a big deal in your site you can use the third part sites like Flickr for your photos for those interested. |
That's definitely a good idea. I always use Flickr.
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Wow, that Web 2 Access site is a goldmine for test results!
Going by the footer, it's something to do with University of Southampton? Makes sense to run that as an academic exercise. It would be hard to monetise such a time-consuming service without a pay-wall.
Bookmarked.
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