best practice for Image Mapping

Question

Here is the scenario. I was asked to maintain a site that is already in existence. They are looking to redesign the site. They have provided me with images from their designer. I noticed that the previous designer embedded the images to the html and used image mapping to link up links to the corresponding area via coordinates.

I'm tempted to do the same thing. They have provided my with the photoshop file.

Is it proper practice to lets say take the image they provided me, make it the background image and image map the links?

Answer 1

After having read your comment above, I may say that this idea is a really horrible practice.

There are numerous disadvantages, here is an excerpt:

• Search engines won't be able to scrape text

• People with handicaps will have big problems
  

  • Screen readers
  • High contrast mode

  
  The system cannot take advantage of having the text in real text form, so it could apply a high contrast theme or feed the text into a screen reader.

• Zooming not possible
  Since raster images cannot scale up properly, users cannot adjust font size or the overall zoom level of the website. (I assume that you don't use vector images.)

• Copying text parts not possible

• Applying CSS, JS or any other effects is simply not possible because you cannot reference anything in a picture! You only have coordinates! There is no associated DOM element you could style or whose event listeners you could use.

• Modifying the images also triggers the change of all coordinates in the <map> .