This plugin adds the A11yFirst Image button to the editor toolbar. It provides authors with additional features for ensuring image accessibility for people with disabilities.

It is a replacement for the standard Image and Enhanced Image plugins.

Overview

The A11yFirst Image plugin is a modification of the Enhanced Image (image2) plugin to include important accessibility features for validating Alternative Text and allowing the author to identify the location within the document of a longer description of the image.

People with visual impairments need descriptions of informative images to understand the purpose of the image. Each informative image must at least have Alternative Text and may require a longer description, especially if the image is a chart or graph.

Alternative Text should be succinct and should not include redundant or irrelevant information (e.g. "image of .."). An image that is purely decorative should have empty Alternative Text, but since this is rare the plugin requires the author to confirm that the image is purely decorative.

A complex informative image should have a long description in the page, adjacent to the image. The plugin provides a way for the author to provide a reference to the location of the long description in the page, which can provide a more semantically meaningful description. For example, a table may be provided that includes the data used to generate a chart or graph.

Features

Alternative Text Validation

The following conditions for Alternative Text are checked:

• Empty
• More than 100 char. in length
• Starts with the phrases ‘image of,’ ‘photo of’ et al.
• Includes file name or size
• For a decorative image, allows the user to confirm that Alternative Text is not required

Identifying Long Description

A select box allows the author to indicate if a longer description of the image exists in the document, and if so, its location (i.e. before, after or before and after the location of the image in the document).

Help

The help command opens a dialog box that contains information to help authors learn more about the accessibility issues related creating alternative text and long descriptions.

NOTE: The help feature is dependent on the A11yFirst Help plugin being installed.