Acronyms

An acronym is a phrase or name abbreviated. For example - SSHA is an acronym for South Staffordshire Housing Association.

We aim to provide full descriptions when using acronyms. These full descriptions will appear as a 'tool tip' when the mouse pointer is over the text. Some browsers also show the cursor as a question mark, which conventionally indicates help.

Alt Text

In order to cater for people who may have difficulty seeing images clearly or at all - we aim to provide an alternative text description to all images on our website.

The alternative text or Alt Text as it is sometimes referred to, will have a maximum length of 150 characters and be added to the ALT attribute of the HTML image tag (this produces a tool tip effect when the user’s mouse is over the image in some browsers).

An appropriate description of the following image might be; “Two members of our Communal Areas Team with tins of paint”.

Title Text

Many elements in a web page have a 'title' attribute that can be used to provide extra information. Some browsers show this information as a 'tool tip' when the mouse hovers over the item.

Hyperlinks may have titles containing additional information about them, as will acronyms such as SSHA (See article on acronyms above).

Long Descriptions

We aim to provide long descriptions for images that require a lengthier explanation than possible with Alt Text.

These long descriptions exist as a seperate web page and are linked via the LongDesc attribute of the HTML image tag.

Please note: Your web browser may require a special plug in to access the Long Desc attributes.

An example of a long description is as follows;

The South Staffordshire Housing Association logo - on the left shows two trees with the sun protuding from behind. To the right of this in a large font size are the Words 'South Staffordshire' and then underneath in a smaller font size are the words 'Housing Association'. On the colour version of the logo - both image and text are magenta on a white background.

This text exists as images/SSHA_Logo_Long_Description.htm