Appendix F: Accessibility Support

G.1 Accessibility and SVG

Drawings done in SVG will be much more accessible that drawings done as image formats for the following reasons:

Text strings in SVG are represented as regular XML character data rather than bits in an image. (See Text.)
At any place in the SVG hierarchy, a drawing can include a long set of descriptive text and/or a short description in the form of a title. Both of these features can be used to help the visually impaired interpret both the intent and specific content of a drawing. The drawing can be architected such that there is a single description for the drawing as a whole or there are multiple descriptions which are distributed within the drawing and describe each separate component within the drawing.
Because of SVG's support of Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 (??? need to add link), there will be the ability to set up personal style sheets to adjust the color contrast of graphic elements.
Because SVG documents are scalable, people with partial visual impairment will be able to zoom in on graphics for easier viewing.

(Additional information on accessibility is forthcoming.)

(??? Still under development)