Techniques for WCAG 2.0

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F72: Failure of Success Criterion 1.1.1 due to using ASCII art without providing a text alternative

Applicability

Any technology.

This failure relates to:

Description

The objective of this failure condition is to avoid the use of ASCII art when a text alternative is not provided. Although ASCII art is implemented as a character string, its meaning comes from the pattern of glyphs formed by a visual presentation of that string, not from the text itself. Therefore ASCII art is non-text content and requires a text alternative. Text alternatives, or links to them, should be placed near the ASCII art in order to be associated with it.

Examples

Failure Example 1: ASCII Art chart without a text alternative

The following ASCII art chart lacks a text alternative and therefore does not meet Success Criterion 1.1.1. Note this failure example does in fact cause this page to fail, but you may skip over the example.

<pre>
  %   __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __   
100 |             *                             |
 90 |                *  *                       |
 80 |          *           *                    |
 70 |             @           *                 |
 60 |          @                 *              |
 50 |       *        @              *           |
 40 |                   @              *        |
 30 |    *  @              @  @           *     |
 20 |                                           |
 10 |    @                       @  @  @  @     |
      0  5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
      Flash frequency (Hz)
</pre>

(none currently listed)

Tests

Procedure

  1. Access a page with ASCII art.

  2. For each instance of ASCII art, check that it has a text alternative.

Expected Results