Designing Accessible Web Pages

Image Maps

Image maps are very useful to replace frames when displaying navigational bars, etc. Image maps are basically graphical links which have two or more links attached to them (they can just be colored shapes) which have links programmed into them via coordinates that create "hotspots".  This is an example of what an image map is like. 

The Ohio State University campus maps are examples of image maps.  Areas on the map are "hotspots".  These hotspots are areas that are linked to another location or page.  There are 8 hot spots on this image map.  Notice each hotspot has an ALT tag letting the user know where the link is taking them.

If you pass the cursor over these hotspots, the mouse icon changes to indicate a link. Again, each hotspot is tagged with an ALT tag just like any other image or decorative link. >>Go ahead and try the image map above! 

This sounds very complicated but in fact FrontPage has a Hotspot tool-bar along the bottom of the screen. This can be used to create rectangular, circular or polygon shapes that serve as links from a graphic. It is important though to learn how to place ALT Tags in with each of these hotspots. Learning the HTML required to incorporate ALT tags is a must for every web developer. This is a very simple process and takes just a few moments to learn. mailto:webaccess@osu.edu.

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