Providing a Text Alternative to an Image Map
When you use an image map—in particular, a server-side image map—it's important to provide a text-based alternative to users who have a text-only browser, who have image loading turned off, or who are using a nonvisual browser. These users won't be able to view your image, so the entire image map will be lost on them if a text-based alternative is not supplied.
Additionally, not all Web spiders and robots can follow the links set up in a server-side image map. By providing a text-based set of links that replicate the links in the image map, you give the spiders and robots a way to better index your pages.
Note
Text-based alternatives are less critical for client-side image maps because of the required ...
Get Platinum Edition Using XHTML™, XML, and Java™ 2 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.