longdesc: best way to implement?

[fatnewt]

I'm working on improving the accessibility of an IT software vendor site that has many diagrams in images.

I've given a first shot at implementing accessible descriptions of these images with the longdesc attribute. I'm not sure if I'm really using it the right way. Take a look, there are two images on this page using it:

http://www.n-able.com/about/market_opportunity.php

Should the description be outside of the site's graphical layout to make it more accessible? Should it be introduced differently?

Are there any good resources with best practices for longdesc?

Thanks in advance.

[redux]

looks good to me. i would provide some mechanisms of getting to the longdesc for browsers which don't expose it directly to the user (heck, even in firefox, i had to right click the image properties, copy the description link, paste it in a new tab). i'm not saying that the dreaded [D] tag is the answer, but possibly something similar in a slicker way (e.g. a nicely worded link, rather than just [D], along the lines of "read a description of the above diagram" or something)

[brothercake]

I would take it out of design context - don't have the longdesc on a page with other template parts, put it alone on a page with nothing else, or with other longdescs and link to it by target.

[redux]

(heck, even in firefox, i had to right click the image properties, copy the description link, paste it in a new tab)

sorry to reanimate such an old thread, i though it would be worth cross-linking it to http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=196116

[fatnewt]

sorry to reanimate such an old thread, i though it would be worth cross-linking it to http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=196116

Good point. (although the page in the original question doesn't make use of longdesc anymore, as the diagrams were removed.)