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.

Example Code:


<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

Techniques are Informative

Techniques are informative—that means they are not required. The basis for determining conformance to WCAG 2.0 is the success criteria from the WCAG 2.0 standard—not the techniques. For important information about techniques, please see the Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria section of Understanding WCAG 2.0.