Common Accessibility Errors

Provide alternative text for all images map hot-spot (AREAs).

Current major browsers support client-side image maps. Image maps are images in which regions of the image contain "hot-spots" where a person can click to follow a link. Client-side image maps should always be used in place of or in addition to the older server-side image maps, except for a few specific cases in which the region shapes cannot be duplicated (like geographic maps). All AREA tags, which define clickable regions, should have an alt attribute.

For example:

<MAP NAME="csmap">
	<AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="5,5,100,40" HREF="jim.html" 
ALT="Jim's Home Page">
	<AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="150,1,195,140" HREF="alice.html" 
ALT="Alice's Home Page">
</MAP>
<A HREF="/cgi-bin/serverside.map">
	<IMG SRC="homepages.GIF" ALT="Map to select homepages" ISMAP 
USEMAP="#csmap" HEIGHT=200 WIDTH=200>
</A>

Rationale

This is important for users who have turned off image-loading in their web browsers, those using text-based browsers like Lynx, and people who have visual or cognitive disabilities and require the use of a screen reader to read the contents of the screen.